How To Boost Mobile Signal At Home

[ReganAndCarter]

My phone contract is with T Mobile which was Orange before. The signal indoors at home used to be very good a few years back, but it has worsened to be practically useless indoors. It seemed to change around the time 4G or whatever was introduced. I get signal strength fluctuating between zero and three bars. Any calls I receive start with distorted speech, before I lose the call completely.

If I go upstairs and lean out of a window, signal strength is good and calls are successful. Has anyone else had experience of this problem and ideas for a possible remedy? I use a basic, old school Nokia dumb phone.

 

[Notch7]

My phone contract is with T Mobile which was Orange before. The signal indoors at home used to be very good a few years back, but it has worsened to be practically useless indoors. It seemed to change around the time 4G or whatever was introduced. I get signal strength fluctuating between zero and three bars. Any calls I receive start with distorted speech, before I lose the call completely.

If I go upstairs and lean out of a window, signal strength is good and calls are successful. Has anyone else had experience of this problem and ideas for a possible remedy? I use a basic, old school Nokia dumb phone.

The easiest thing is find out if O2 or Vodaphone work, borrow a phone or something.

If it does change provider.

Of course depends if your phone is unlocked.

I had the same issue, O2 signal was terrible at home and office, so I changed to what is now EE.

If you have an old phone I imagine you are on a SIM only?

 

[HawkEye244]

You can get a signal booster for this sort of thing, I don't know quite what's involved, but worth phoning T mobile, you'll likely need to ask for someone that speaks english.

 

[Hot&Cold]

Have used wifi to make calls on my mobile when in No service areas or in feeble mobile strength areas.

Have used same phone in aircraft on their wifi service.

Can even use mobile phone with sim card removed,its all wifi and no additional charges,

cant mention the network as concerned about who the foof can listen in while on wifi,hello Blad my friend.

 

[Mottie]

I’m on Three and have an iPhone. That has 'WiFi calling' and as above, if the 3/4G signal is poor, it automatically switches to WiFi.

 

[freddiemercurystwin]

Depends on the network and phone as to whether using wifi is an option, getting out of a contract because of poor reception is a ballache but doable and will only work if you jump through the hoops, google it, there are whole forums etc dedicated to such matters.

 

[^woody^]

I'm with Three and have a signal booster (Femtocell) at home which uses your broadband connection to boost the local phone signal. You can register several phones to it.

Three provide these free for customers in poor reception areas. I recall that EE and Vodafone did something similar but not sure if for private or business customers.

 

[Ian H]

I'm with Three too and with the Femfresh add on I get signal everywhere.

 

[Doggit]

The useless barstewards didn't warn me of a poor indoor reception, then didn't tell me about the wifi switch option, then didn't give me the PAK codes when I asked for it so went on holiday thinking I'd at least get overseas calls free, then they gave me a the PAK codes in store, and a week after I'd actually left them, then received a text actually giving them to me only about 5 weeks after they were supposed to.

Then to add insult to injury, they charged me for the overseas calls, as well as the contract itself. And I now find from you sods that I could have got a signal booster, and avoided all this hassle.

However, Regan should be able to check the signal coverage on the internet, and if he upgrades to a 4G phone, may well find he gets a better signal.

 

[ReganAndCarter]

Thanks for your replies, a few things to consider. Not really too keen to change to a smart phone, as I'm a bit of a technophobe. Unfortunately even my router is the wired variety to a desktop pc. So wifi may be a big leap.

I don't think it will be a problem to switch networks, as I have been with T Mobile/Orange for 15 years, so I think they've had their money's worth. So, I may look to see if switching provider is going to work. When I took out my contract with Orange, they had the best coverage - but I suppose others have overtaken them.

 

[ReganAndCarter]

I'm with Three too and with the Femfresh add on I get signal everywhere.

Not sure what sort of 'signals' a Femfresh would be giving off.