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.
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.
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?
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No mobile signal in the house · Calls drop out at home · How to check your mobile signal · Mobile signal booster · All areas