--- title: What are the disadvantages of bandwidth accounting in GB, TB and PB? description: Bandwidth accounting in bits & bytes is really problematic and provides a lack of clarity especially in regards of conclusions publishers have to draw from them in regards to delivered file sizes, tim --- ![company logo](https://help.dev.lightcast.com/hs-fs/hubfs/test-header.png?height=120&name=test-header.png) [Support Center](https://help.dev.lightcast.com/) - [Open a Support Ticket](https://mediacloud.dev.lightcast.com/support-center/open-ticket) - - [Go to Customer Portal](https://help.dev.lightcast.com/tickets) Bandwidth Usage (Video Minutes) - [Getting Started](https://help.dev.lightcast.com/getting-started) - [Video Guides](https://help.dev.lightcast.com/video-guides) - [Subtitles](https://help.dev.lightcast.com/video-guides#subtitles) - [Audio Archive](https://help.dev.lightcast.com/video-guides#audio-archive) - [Sub Channels](https://help.dev.lightcast.com/video-guides#sub-channels) - 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Bandwidth accounting in bits & bytes is really problematic and provides a lack of clarity especially in regards of conclusions publishers have to draw from them in regards to delivered file sizes, time viewed (and how much of each file), how much of a file has been downloaded, but not yet watched, etc. Large (not very optimized) video files, not enough different bitrate renditions, and a CDN and players which immediately download the entire file, instead of using smart-buffering in order to conserve bandwidth and only pre-load the amount of video the viewer is actually watching can lead to a high number of GB/TB. This is why we simplify bandwidth accounting and account for it by video minutes, something more and more streaming providers are going to, and why we also run all uploads through a very sophisticated (and expensive) transcoding process. Through the 12 different file renditions, compression optimization, and the bitrate-adaptive CDN delivery, bandwidth consumption is being reduced and optimized. As a result, the adaptive delivery of optimized files in that many different bitrates, saves around a third in bandwidth.  [![company logo](https://help.dev.lightcast.com/hs-fs/hubfs/Untitled-2.png?height=120&name=Untitled-2.png)](https://mediacloud.lightcast.com) - [![facebook_social_link_icon_alt_text](https://static.hsstatic.net/TemplateAssets/static-1.329/img/hs_default_template_images/modules/Follow+Me+-+Email/facebook_circle_color.png)](https://www.facebook.com/lightcastinc) - [![twitter_social_link_icon_alt_text](https://static.hsstatic.net/TemplateAssets/static-1.329/img/hs_default_template_images/modules/Follow+Me+-+Email/twitter_circle_color.png)](https://twitter.com/lightcast_inc) - [![linkedin_social_link_icon_alt_text](https://static.hsstatic.net/TemplateAssets/static-1.329/img/hs_default_template_images/modules/Follow+Me+-+Email/linkedin_circle_color.png)](https://www.linkedin.com/company/lightcast/) - [Open a Support Ticket](https://mediacloud.dev.lightcast.com/support-center/open-ticket) - - [Go to Customer Portal](https://help.dev.lightcast.com/tickets)