How to improve the mobile signal inside your home

Why there is signal outside and none inside

It is the question that brings almost everyone here, and the answer takes apart the explanation everybody accepts. 'There is no coverage here' is almost never true. What happens is that the signal reaching your plot is already spent, and the last metre — the façade — eats what little was left. In the street the phone works because there is nothing in the way. In the living room it does not, because there are thirty centimetres of wall between the operator's mast and your handset.

Four things decide how much signal is left indoors: the distance to your operator's mast, whether a sierra sits in between, the height and orientation of your house, and what it is built of. The first three are set by the land. The fourth is set by the builder, and in the Vega Baja it is the commonest of all: a modern house on an urbanisation is made of the very materials that block radio best.

• Thermal clay block and reinforced concrete. Concrete has a steel mesh inside it. To radio, a metal mesh is a screen.
• Low-emissivity glazing. Good double glazing carries an invisible metal coating that reflects heat. It reflects the mobile signal too.
• Aluminium shutters. Rolled down, they close the one opening that was letting anything in.
• The garage, the basement and a ground floor with earth around it: that is where the signal vanishes completely, and it is usually where the landline is.
• Orientation. If your operator's mast is on the other side of the house, the signal has to cross the whole building before it reaches the living room.

Each of those four reasons behaves differently and is fixed differently. They are set out in full, with the towns where each is to be expected, in why you have no mobile signal inside your house.

Which solution fits which case

• Three or four bars outside and none inside. The commonest case and the easiest. WiFi Calling first; if that does not suit you, or you want the phone to ring without depending on the router, then an outdoor antenna and a booster. The page for this case.
• One bar outside, coming and going. It can be done, but it has to be measured first: a weak signal can be amplified, a dirty one cannot. The page for this case.
• Nothing at all outside, on the roof. There is nothing to amplify there and we will say so at the survey. What is left is WiFi Calling over fibre or over satellite. The page for this case.
• Calls come in but they drop. It is not always weak signal: it can be the hop between masts, or the handover from WiFi to the mobile network as you leave the house. The page for this case.