Mobile data speeds measured by the public across Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole

People test their own phone’s mobile data speed where they are standing with a free web page, and every reading goes onto a public map as part of a square. This page is the method, the limits and the totals for Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole, frozen at one moment so they can be quoted and checked.

Readings: 1,900 inside Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole (2,821 on the whole map)
Taken outdoors: 1,561 (82%); 268 indoors; 71 not recorded
Squares with readings: 330
Verified squares: 109 with enough readings to show a result; 83 on outdoor readings alone
Days with readings: 29 (17 August to 16 September 2026)
Networks: Every network, pooled. We publish no figures for any single operator.

Figures frozen at 17:07 UTC on 17 September 2026. The live map keeps moving, so quote these and cite the time.

By town

Area	Readings	Outdoor	Squares	Verified
Bournemouth	911	78%	152	63
Christchurch	118	81%	41	4
Poole	871	86%	137	42
Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole	1,900	82%	330	109

Towns are the former Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole council areas, which merged in 2019.

What the verified squares show

Each square’s result is the median of every reading taken in it, on whatever network each phone was on. The bands are the ones the public map uses. The second column counts only outdoor readings, and only squares with enough of them, which takes the building out of the result.

Typical download speed in the square	All readings	Outdoor only
Great for working (25 Mbps or more)	72	51
Fine for calls and email (10 to 25 Mbps)	22	19
Struggles (under 10 Mbps)	15	13
Verified squares	109	83

When the readings were taken

Morning (6am to noon): 264 · afternoon (noon to 6pm): 1,082 · evening (6pm to midnight): 533 · night (midnight to 6am): 21. UK time.
Weekdays: 996 · weekends: 904.

Why this exists

Measuring coverage can tell a different story from estimating it. In June 2025 Dorset Council reported that equipment on its 32 food waste lorries had carried out more than a million tests over 2,400 miles, and that where Ofcom estimated 90% of Dorset had good coverage from all four networks, the measurements suggested below 50% (Dorset Council, 24 June 2025). That survey covered the Dorset Council area. The survey company’s own list of council coverage checkers includes Dorset Council and does not include Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole (Streetwave, checked 17 September 2026). We know of no published independent measured survey of mobile coverage for Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole; if one exists, we would like to hear about it.

How a reading is taken

Speed, not radio signal. The page downloads a 10 MB file from a Cloudflare server near the phone and times the whole transfer. The delay figure is the middle of three round trips. Browsers do not give web pages the phone’s radio measurements or the name of its network.
Mobile data only. The test will not run on WiFi. Where the browser reports the connection type, the page checks it; iPhones do not report it, so their users confirm it themselves. In Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole, 1,204 readings were checked by the browser and 696 confirmed by the tester.
Indoors or outdoors is chosen by the tester before each test, with the button that starts it. “Not recorded” readings come from an earlier version of the page that did not ask.
A square, never a point. The phone’s position is used once and the reading is stored against the centre of a square: about 500 m across inland, and about 140 m on the beaches, piers and promenade between Sandbanks and Hengistbury Head, where nobody lives. The small seafront squares are only used when the position fix is better than 50 m; a fix worse than 1,000 m is refused. 47 of the 330 squares here are seafront squares.
Verified means 8 or more readings in an inland square, or 5 in a seafront square. Below that the map shows the square as early days rather than a result.
Limits on repeats: one reading per connection per minute, and a daily cap per square. No name, account, IP address or device identifier is stored with a reading. Readings are kept for 400 days.
Which area a square counts in is decided by its centre, using the Office for National Statistics council boundaries out to the low-water line (December 2024 for Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole; December 2018 for the former towns). Seafront squares always count here. A square whose centre falls just outside every council, in the sea, counts here if this is the nearest council and within 400 m.

What these figures cannot tell you

Not a survey of every street. People test where they choose to, so some areas have many readings and others none. Squares with no readings say nothing either way.
Nothing about any one network. Every phone’s reading goes into its square’s median, whatever the network, and the mix of networks can differ from square to square. We do not compare or rank networks.
Speed depends on more than coverage: the phone, its data plan, how busy the mast is at that moment, and walls. That is why indoor and outdoor readings are kept apart above.
Thin in places. Christchurch has only 118 readings and 4 verified squares — treat its figures as early, not as a picture of the town.
Squares straddle boundaries. A square near a council boundary counts wholly on the side where its centre falls.

Figures for a specific place or question

We do not publish the individual readings as a download. If you are a journalist, a council officer or a researcher and need figures for a particular area, time of day or question, ask us and we will share what the data can honestly support.

Collected and published by 365 Techies, an IT firm in Bournemouth. Independent — not affiliated with, endorsed by or funded by any mobile network. The public map and the test itself.