The short version
“How many staff can one 5G connection handle?” has no single answer, and anyone who gives you a number without asking what the staff do is guessing. Fifteen people answering email and using a web-based CRM need very little. Six people in video meetings with clients at once can fill the upload on many 5G services.
The method that works:
- List what runs at the same time at the busiest hour.
- Add up upload and download separately, using vendor figures for each activity.
- Measure what the 5G service actually delivers at the site at that hour, especially upload.
- Leave headroom, and put voice first in the router’s queue.
Upload almost always runs out first. On 5G it is usually a fraction of download and varies more through the day.
Bandwidth per activity, from the vendors’ own figures
These figures come from the platform vendors. Use the ones for the platforms your business actually runs.
| Activity | Upload per person or call | Download per person or call | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cloud phone call, G.711 codec | 90 kbps | 90 kbps | 8x8 |
| Cloud phone call, G.729 codec | 35 kbps | 35 kbps | 8x8 |
| Contact centre call on 8x8 | add 30 kbps | add 30 kbps | 8x8 |
| Teams audio (recommended) | 58 kbps | 58 kbps | Microsoft |
| Teams video, one-to-one (recommended) | 1.5 Mbps | 1.5 Mbps | Microsoft |
| Teams video, meetings (recommended) | 2.5 Mbps | 4 Mbps | Microsoft |
| 8x8 video meeting | up to 3 Mbps | 2.5 Mbps for the main video | 8x8 |
| Zoom group video, 720p | 2.6 Mbps | 1.8 Mbps | Zoom |
| Screen sharing, Teams meetings (recommended) | 2.5 Mbps | 2.5 Mbps | Microsoft |
Two notes on the table. Microsoft’s figures are per endpoint, so someone in a meeting on a laptop and a phone counts twice. And cloud file sync has no fixed figure: Microsoft notes that a first-time OneDrive sync or a folder move causes a spike, and that each synced computer multiplies the traffic. It will take whatever upload is free until it finishes.
Voice needs consistency more than bandwidth
A cloud phone call uses less than 100 kbps each way. Ten concurrent calls fit in about 1 Mbps. Bandwidth is not why calls break up on 5G.
What breaks them is delay, jitter and packet loss. 8x8’s targets are less than 150 ms one-way delay (ideally under 100 ms), less than 30 ms jitter (ideally under 10 ms) and less than 1% packet loss. A 5G cell that is busy can push jitter and loss past those limits for a few seconds at a time, and that is when callers hear robot voice or gaps.
Two things keep calls clean on a shared connection:
- Traffic priority on your router. Most congestion happens in your own upload queue, when a backup or a big file save fills it. A router that sends voice first protects calls regardless of the plan.
- Headroom. A connection running near full upload has no room for a burst. Calls are the first casualty.
Dropped calls on cloud phones covers what this looks like in practice.
A worked example: a 15-person office on 5G
Take a 15-person professional services office at its busiest hour, around mid-morning. The call and video figures come from the table above. The sync cap and the browsing figures are planning assumptions, so replace them with what you see on your own router.
| Concurrent activity | Count | Upload | Download |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cloud phone calls (G.711) | 5 | 0.45 Mbps | 0.45 Mbps |
| Teams video meetings | 4 people | 10 Mbps | 16 Mbps |
| Cloud file sync, capped on the sync app | office-wide | 5 Mbps | 5 Mbps |
| Browsing, email, SaaS | 15 people | 2 Mbps | 15 Mbps |
| Total at peak | about 17.5 Mbps | about 36.5 Mbps | |
| With 50% headroom | about 26 Mbps | about 55 Mbps |
The download need is easy for most 5G services. The upload need is not guaranteed. At the time of writing (October 2026), Telstra publishes business-hours upload ranges of 3 to 21 Mbps on its mid-tier 5G Business Internet plan and 5 to 96 Mbps on its top plan. At a site near the top of that range, this office is fine. At a site near the bottom, the video meetings will struggle every morning.
That is why the site measurement matters more than the plan sheet. Measure upload where the router will sit, at the busiest hour, on several days. If the measured upload is below the peak-plus-headroom figure, you have three choices: an external antenna or a different carrier to improve signal, fewer concurrent video streams (cameras off in larger meetings), or a fixed service as the primary with 5G behind it.
Call centres: which 5G options handle concurrent calls best?
Work the numbers for a 20-seat contact centre on 8x8, all agents on calls at once, using G.711:
- 20 calls x (90 kbps + 30 kbps for contact centre) = about 2.4 Mbps each way
Bandwidth is small. A call centre is still one of the worst candidates for 5G as its only connection, because every call is live and customer-facing, and a few seconds of jitter at peak hits every agent at once. Call centres also tend to sit in busy commercial areas where the local cell is under the most load.
What we recommend for a call centre:
- A fixed primary, ideally fibre with good upload and a support commitment
- 5G as automatic failover, on a different network from the fixed service
- Active/standby failover, not load balancing. 8x8 recommends dual WAN in active/standby for its services and warns that active/active load balancing can cause out-of-order packets, jitter and poor call quality
- Voice prioritised on the router
- Monitoring that alerts when the site is running on 5G
If 5G has to be the primary, for a temporary site or while fibre is built, choose the carrier with the strongest and most stable signal at the site, not the fastest plan on paper, and test with real calls at the busiest time. Do you need a contact centre or just a better phone system covers the platform side.
Is there business 5G with priority over consumer traffic?
On standard small-business 5G plans, no. Your traffic shares the cell with everyone else’s.
At the enterprise end, Telstra Dynamic 5G gives “dedicated access to Telstra’s 5G standalone network, with a committed throughput”. It is only available in Telstra’s 5G standalone areas, needs a compatible device supplied and installed by Telstra, and is priced around a reservation fee plus usage. Telstra also offers prioritised network access for emergency services, which is not available to ordinary businesses.
At the other end, some consumer 5G plans state that their traffic can get lower priority when the network is congested. That is one more reason a business should be on a business plan.
For most small and medium businesses, the practical answer to congestion is not network priority but site design: the right carrier for the location, an external antenna, voice prioritised on your router, and a fixed service where consistency really matters.
Signs one 5G connection is no longer enough
- Calls or video break up at the same time most days
- Upload measured at the busiest hour is below your peak-plus-headroom figure
- Staff schedule uploads or backups around the internet
- The team has grown and nobody re-ran the sizing
- You hit the plan’s data allowance before the end of the month
When two or more of these show up, either add a second service or move to a fixed primary and keep 5G as the backup. Business 5G vs fibre: the real cost over a lease helps with the timing.
Get the sizing done for your site
Kookaburra Comms sizes the connection from what your team actually runs, measures 5G signal and upload at the premises on each carrier, and sets up the business router with voice priority and failover. As an 8x8 partner we also look at the phone and contact centre side, so the network and the calls are designed together. Start with business internet and tell us your headcount, platforms and busiest hour.