Poor mobile signal at home on the Costa Blanca
It is the most maddening case of all, because it looks as if it almost works. There is one bar. Sometimes two. Messages arrive, but half an hour late and all at once. Calls sometimes ring and sometimes the caller is told the phone is switched off. And the battery runs down faster than anywhere else.
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Why one bar is worse than none
With no bars the phone gives up and rests. With one bar it does not give up: it spends the day trying to register, pushing its transmit power to maximum so the mast can hear it, losing the registration and starting again. That is where the three things you notice come from: the battery dying, the messages arriving in shoves, and the calls that sometimes ring and sometimes do not.
And there is an asymmetry almost nobody knows about that explains most of it: the operator's mast transmits with far more power than your handset does. So you can be hearing the network perfectly well, one bar, two, while the network cannot hear you. You receive; you are not received. The result is a phone that shows coverage and cannot hold a conversation.
Strength is not the same as quality
The bars on a phone tell only one of the two halves of the problem: how much signal arrives. The other half is how much noise arrives with it. A strong signal bounced off a hillside and mixed with other masts' is useless even at four bars; a weaker but clean signal works. That is why two houses on the same street, showing the same bars, behave differently.
For a booster this distinction is not a detail: it decides the result. Amplifying a dirty signal amplifies the noise with it and gains nothing. That is why the survey does not only look at how much there is, but at which mast it is and how cleanly it arrives, and why the right answer is sometimes to aim at a more distant mast.
The summer case
On the coast there is a case of its own that is not physics but arithmetic. Towns like Torrevieja, Santa Pola, Guardamar and Orihuela Costa multiply their population between June and September, and a network that is enough in February saturates in August. If your coverage gets worse precisely in summer and at the busiest hours, the problem is not your house: the mast is sharing itself among more users. A booster helps, because it gives you more margin than the rest, but it is worth knowing that is the cause.
Pages for the areas where this case is commonest: Torrevieja · Ciudad Quesada · all areas.
What to do about one bar, in order
Almost everything written on this subject treats someone with no signal and someone with one bar that comes and goes as the same case. They are not: with one bar there is signal, and what fails is that it does not hold. These are the steps for that case, from the free one to the one that costs money.
- Look for where a call holds, not for where there are more bars. Call someone and walk round the house talking: upstairs, the window facing the town, the side of the house away from the hillside. Bars change within seconds; a call that does not drop in one spot is a fact. Sometimes knowing where that spot is is enough.
- If the phone jumps between 5G and 4G, lock it to 4G. At the edge of coverage a handset can spend the day switching networks, and every switch is a drop. The mobile network settings let you keep it on 4G. What you should not do is drop it to 3G: that network is being switched off in Spain, and without 4G with VoLTE calls fail. How to check VoLTE.
- Ask someone on another provider to try in the same spot. With one bar, the mast serving you is far away or blocked, and another operator's mast may be somewhere else. If their call holds where yours drops, the problem is not your house but your network.
- Take your calls off the weak network with WiFi calling, if you have internet at home. It is free and it is the quickest relief for this case, because calls stop depending on that bar. It does not replace mobile coverage for 112. How to switch it on.
- If it only happens in summer and at the busiest hours, none of the steps above changes the cause: the mast is saturated. It is worth knowing before spending anything.
- Outdoor antenna and booster, with your operator's authorisation, when the bar up high comes from one mast and is steady. It is the case with the best results. What is not a good idea is buying a repeater online and plugging it in: without authorisation it is not legal, and a badly set device pollutes the neighbours' signal. How to tell whether there is signal to boost · what the rules say.
We measure › We ask for authorisation › We install › We test
We measure
Indoors, outdoors and on the roof, with a meter. If nothing can be done, we say so before starting.
We ask for authorisation
From your operator, in writing and in your name. Without it nothing is installed, and you pay for no installation.
We install
Aimed outdoor antenna, booster and indoor antenna. Half a day.
We test
We measure again in the same spot and make a call with you before we leave.
Questions about this
I have one bar. Can it be boosted?
Why does my battery drain so fast at home?
WhatsApps arrive but calls do not. Why?
Will mobile data improve too?
One bar in your living room?
It is the case that resolves best, and the one most worth measuring first. Tell us where you live and which provider you are with.
No mobile signal in the house · Calls drop out at home · How to check your mobile signal · Mobile signal booster · All areas
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