Why you have no mobile signal inside your house
It is nearly always one of these four reasons. Knowing which one is yours changes the work, changes the price and sometimes changes the answer to whether it can be fixed at all. This page explains them without selling anything, and says at the end what else plays a part and fits none of the four.
Almost everyone arrives here with the same sentence: 'I have to walk into the garden to talk.' And almost everyone arrives with the same wrong explanation, which is that 'there is no coverage here'. In most cases there is: what there is not is coverage indoors, which is a different thing and has four possible origins.
The four behave differently and are fixed differently. Two of them are solved almost always. One is solved sometimes. And one, the closed valley, is the only one where we fairly often have to say it cannot be done — and we say so before charging anything.
Distance — The mast exists, but it is far away
Flat ground and a house away from the village. What arrives is already spent, and at that distance the little that is left will not go through a wall.
It is the commonest cause across the whole Segura floodplain, and the easiest to recognise: one or two bars in the garden, none indoors, and steadily worse the further you get from the village. There is no obstacle, there are simply kilometres. A mobile signal loses strength with distance whatever you do, and when little is left, thirty centimetres of wall finishes it off. You fight it with height and a directional antenna: raising the antenna above the roof and aiming it at the right mast recovers what the air had taken. It is the cause we get the best results with.
Municipalities where this cause is to be expected: Rojales · Benijófar · Formentera del Segura · Daya Vieja · San Fulgencio y La Marina · Daya Nueva · Almoradí · Algorfa · Los Montesinos · Dolores · Catral · Rafal · Jacarilla · San Miguel de Salinas · Bigastro · Granja de Rocamora · Orihuela · Elche · Benferri · Aspe
Your own walls — Plenty of signal outside and none at all inside
The problem is not in the kilometre of air: it is in the metre of façade. Thermal clay block, reinforced concrete, metal-coated glass, aluminium shutters.
It is the cause behind nearly every coastal urbanisation and all of Quesada, and the least understood, because out in the street the phone works perfectly. People assume that if there is signal outside there must be signal inside. There need not be: a modern villa is built from the very materials that best block the 800 MHz band, which is the one that goes through walls. Reinforced concrete carries a steel mesh; good double glazing carries an invisible metal coating that reflects heat and radio alike; the shutters are aluminium. Together they turn the house into a box. The good news is that this is the easiest case: an antenna outside, where the signal is, and an indoor antenna inside, joined by a cable. The wall stops mattering because the signal no longer has to cross it.
Municipalities where this cause is to be expected: Ciudad Quesada · Guardamar del Segura · Torrevieja · Orihuela Costa · Santa Pola · Pilar de la Horadada
The sierra — The mast is close, but there is a mountain in front
You do not go round rock. Either you get above it, or you aim at a different mast even if it is twice as far.
It happens in every town at the foot of a sierra: Callosa, Redován, Cox, Crevillente, Albatera. Here the distance to the mast can be laughable — two kilometres — and still nothing arrives, because there are five hundred metres of limestone in between. A mobile signal does not go through a mountain: what arrives is a reflection, a bounce off another slope, and a reflection is precisely the signal that collapses the moment you step into the living room. The answer is almost never more pole. It is a different mast: finding one in plain view even if it is much further away, because a weak clean signal works and a strong bounced one does not. It can only be seen with a meter on the roof, and it is the cause where a survey saves the most money.
Municipalities where this cause is to be expected: Callosa de Segura · Cox · Albatera · Redován · Crevillente · Novelda
The closed valley — Sierras all round, and very few people inside
Both causes at once: rock in every direction, and so few residents that no operator has a reason to put a mast inside.
This is the case of the two Hondones and of La Romana. A closed valley adds the rock's shadow to arithmetic that never fails: an operator puts a mast where there are people to pay for it, and 1,334 people spread over twelve square kilometres do not pay for it. The consequence is that whatever signal exists comes from outside the valley, over a ridge, badly weakened. Here mast height is worth more than anywhere else, and here is also where we most often have to say no. We say it at the survey, before charging for an installation, and we consider that the most important part of the job.
Municipalities where this cause is to be expected: Hondón de las Nieves · Hondón de los Frailes · La Romana
What else plays a part, and is none of the four
The four above are the ones that decide whether anything can be done and what has to be fitted, which is why they are the backbone of this page. But they are not the whole truth, and anyone who tells you they are is selling you something. These other things change the result, sometimes a lot, and almost none of them can be seen from the street:
- The band. One operator spreads its signal across several frequencies. The low ones (800 MHz) go through walls and travel far; the high ones carry more data but stop at the first wall. Two identical houses on the same street can be latched onto different bands.
- Congestion. In August, on the coast, the same mast has ten times as many handsets hanging off it. The coverage has not changed; your place in the queue has.
- Materials. Reinforced concrete, foil-backed insulation and low-emissivity glass — the kind that saves on air conditioning — slow the signal far more than brick. It is why a new house sometimes gets less signal than the old one next door.
- Aspect and neighbours. A house facing the sierra and one facing the sea on the same plot do not receive the same thing. A new building in front can take signal away from the house behind it overnight.
- Changes in the network itself. Operators switch carriers on and off, re-aim antennas and give 5G room by taking it from 4G. It is the most frequent explanation for 'you could talk here before and now you can't'.
- The handset itself. A metal case, a poorer internal antenna and a hand over the top all change the reading. That is why we measure with equipment and not with the little bars on a phone.
None of this changes what we do: we still measure first and still tell you no when the answer is no. We write it down because a neighbour with a house just like yours and better signal does not mean somebody is lying to you.
How to work out which case is yours, on your own and for free
You need no equipment. With your own phone, in ten minutes:
- Step out into the street, in front of your house, and look at the bars. If you have three or four there and none indoors, your case is the walls, and it is the easiest of all.
- Go as high as you can in your house — roof terrace, solarium, upstairs window. If it improves a lot compared with the street, your case is distance and height is going to work in your favour.
- Turn a full 360° up there watching the bars, and note the direction where they rise most. If there is only one good direction and there is a mountain squarely in front of it, your case is the sierra.
- Take the car a kilometre out of the village, away from the mountain. If there is nothing there either, and you live in a valley with few people, your case is the closed valley and it is the hard one.
With that you already know more than most of the people who will quote you over the phone. What comes next — which antenna, pointing where, at what height — does need a meter on the roof, and that is what the survey is for. Before spending anything, check whether the free route works for you: your own operator's WiFi Calling, which needs nobody's permission and nobody coming to your house.
One thing you will not read on the sites that sell you the device: the signal booster you buy online cannot be switched on by yourself. It transmits on your operator's frequencies and needs that operator's prior authorisation; the operator's silence does not count as permission. The device is not banned: using it without that permission is, and it is you who answers for it. We explain it in full, with the Ministry's official notice quoted word for word, in are mobile signal boosters legal in Spain?.
Which one is yours?
Tell us the town or the urbanisation and what you see on the bars, and we will tell you the same day which of the four it is and whether it can be fixed. The survey costs 49 € and is free if you go ahead.
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