How to improve mobile signal strength?

Spacehonker

Spacehonker

Spacehonker

Associate
Joined
7 Nov 2023
Posts
11
Location
Northern France
I live in a rural black hole in northern France. There is no mobile network signal at the house. The signal improves to intermittent a few hundred yards down the road so it's just a fringe area at best. I now find that my bank and various operations like credit card payments require me to receive a security code in order to complete an online purchase on my PC at home. Without a signal I have to grab a mobile and jump in the car and drive until I can receive the code, then go back home only to find the procedure has timed out before I could enter the code. What I need is some sort of device to improve the signal to my phone. There are hundreds of aerials that supposedly catch the signal and amplify it but I haven't yet discovered a phone with a socket on it to take the cable coming from the aerial. I don't have a problem of landlords preventing my erecting an aerial on the roof or even on a tower in the garden so that sort of solution could be possible. I just need to find an aerial system that can be physically attached to my mobile. Has anyone found a solution to this problem?
 
Orange (now EE) used to do a mobile booster station for the home for use in poor signal areas and deadzones. Ask your mobile provider what they offer.
 
My "service" provider is Orange here in France and they are just as useless as can be imagined. When I asked them about this issue a few years ago they offered only one solution. They sold me a device called a femtocell for about €20 which accessed the mobile network via my internet router that is fed by a copper landline. It solved the problem for about 18 months when they announced they were no longer supporting the technology. They even had the arrogance to request I send the unit back (without refund of initial price or return postage cost). There are various websites that show network coverage of the service providers and only two or three in this area show coverage but it is on the very edge and not guaranteed to be functional when I have enquired. My latest research into alternatives only came up with Skynet the satellite system. €500+ for the kit and a monthly fee of €75. Great speed apparently but that is of no use to me and the cost is a deal breaker. Orange have announced their intention to phase out all copper wire distribution over the next couple of years. When that happens I'll be stuffed because we will be miles away from any proposed fibre installation. I am still hopeful of finding some sort of amplified aerial to suck up enough signal to keep us in touch with the 21st century.
 
You're not going to find anything that connects by usb c/lightning that isn't snake oil, those ports aren't designed to do that.

Can you not use WiFi calling? I'm in a weak area (not a black hole but bad enough to make calls tricky) so when I'm at home I put my phone in flight mode with wifi on.. sorted, it's like I'm sat on a Vodafone mast.. calls, texts etc.. all 100%
 
WiFi calling is the preferred solution for this these days. It routes your mobile voice connection over your home WiFi.
You may need to change your provider to one that supports it.
 
Either wifi calling or

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matt100 said:
Can you not use WiFi calling? I'm in a weak area (not a black hole but bad enough to make calls tricky) so when I'm at home I put my phone in flight mode with wifi on.. sorted, it's like I'm sat on a Vodafone mast.. calls, texts etc.. all 100%
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You just saved me a headache! I have WiFi calling enabled but didn't know you could do that. I thought and observed aeroplane mode killed all wireless communication methods, so it was an all or nothing.

There is an ongoing issue with our local Vodafone mast where it keeps going up and down, so I think the WiFi calling also enables and disabled, causing the WiFi call to not be stable.
 
Spacehonker said:
I live in a rural black hole in northern France. There is no mobile network signal at the house. The signal improves to intermittent a few hundred yards down the road so it's just a fringe area at best. I now find that my bank and various operations like credit card payments require me to receive a security code in order to complete an online purchase on my PC at home. Without a signal I have to grab a mobile and jump in the car and drive until I can receive the code, then go back home only to find the procedure has timed out before I could enter the code. What I need is some sort of device to improve the signal to my phone. There are hundreds of aerials that supposedly catch the signal and amplify it but I haven't yet discovered a phone with a socket on it to take the cable coming from the aerial. I don't have a problem of landlords preventing my erecting an aerial on the roof or even on a tower in the garden so that sort of solution could be possible. I just need to find an aerial system that can be physically attached to my mobile. Has anyone found a solution to this problem?
Click to expand...
What bank are you with? Credit Agricole has a feature called Secuipass where you can set up 2FA with a phone running CA’s Ma Banque app which avoids needing to dash into mobile coverage to receive the SMS in time.

Orange stopped their 3G femtocell service as they wanted to limit interference with 4G services.

The 4G signal boosters available online have 3 elements: an external antenna to received the mobile signal from the nearest cell tower, a bidirectional amplifier and an internal antenna to provide signal inside your house. I’m not aware of anything that provides a physical RF connection to a phone a most phone manufacturers don’t allow this.

Best bet is ask on your local FB group to see if anyone has found a decent booster that works on Orange.
 
Spacehonker said:
My "service" provider is Orange here in France and they are just as useless as can be imagined. When I asked them about this issue a few years ago they offered only one solution. They sold me a device called a femtocell for about €20 which accessed the mobile network via my internet router that is fed by a copper landline. It solved the problem for about 18 months when they announced they were no longer supporting the technology. They even had the arrogance to request I send the unit back (without refund of initial price or return postage cost). There are various websites that show network coverage of the service providers and only two or three in this area show coverage but it is on the very edge and not guaranteed to be functional when I have enquired. My latest research into alternatives only came up with Skynet the satellite system. €500+ for the kit and a monthly fee of €75. Great speed apparently but that is of no use to me and the cost is a deal breaker. Orange have announced their intention to phase out all copper wire distribution over the next couple of years. When that happens I'll be stuffed because we will be miles away from any proposed fibre installation. I am still hopeful of finding some sort of amplified aerial to suck up enough signal to keep us in touch with the 21st century.
Click to expand...
Does anyone operate a Territoires Sans Fils service in your area? It’s basically a high power WiFi link from your house to a water tower or similar that then connects to an ISP. You get a WiFi router at your end to provide broad-ish band internet.

I use one here in 47 as I’m too far from the nearest exchange to get ADSL.
 
have you tried a payg sim from all the providers. Even though i am on the end of the maps there is a difference between them for me especially inside.
 
GuruJockStrap said:
You just saved me a headache! I have WiFi calling enabled but didn't know you could do that. I thought and observed aeroplane mode killed all wireless communication methods, so it was an all or nothing.

There is an ongoing issue with our local Vodafone mast where it keeps going up and down, so I think the WiFi calling also enables and disabled, causing the WiFi call to not be stable.
Click to expand...
These days flight mode is only really cellular.. the latest update I got to my S23 Ultra which I guess is the latest android version now allows me to leave bluetooth and wifi on as I toggle flight mode.

The only thing I've not been able to conquer (and I do this for a living) is having flight mode go on and off reliably as I enter and leave the house, so I often take the dog out and then realise I've been on flight mode for an hour in the woods. Peaceful but inconvenient.
 
Unless it's different for Samsung phones, for Pixels at least you don't have to force WiFi calling by going into aeroplane mode. As soon as I'm connected to WiFi my Pixel instantly switches over to WiFi calling, regardless of how strong 4G/5G is.
 
Terminal_Boy said:
What bank are you with? Credit Agricole has a feature called Secuipass where you can set up 2FA with a phone running CA’s Ma Banque app which avoids needing to dash into mobile coverage to receive the SMS in time.

Orange stopped their 3G femtocell service as they wanted to limit interference with 4G services.

The 4G signal boosters available online have 3 elements: an external antenna to received the mobile signal from the nearest cell tower, a bidirectional amplifier and an internal antenna to provide signal inside your house. I’m not aware of anything that provides a physical RF connection to a phone a most phone manufacturers don’t allow this.

Best bet is ask on your local FB group to see if anyone has found a decent booster that works on Orange.
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Thankyou Matt. You certainly sound knowledgable on the subject. I was with the dreaded Credit Aggravation when I first arrived here but finally saw the light and made my escape. Running Apps requires a smartphone I think, and since there is no coverage here they would be of no use. When the femtocell service went belly up I was forced to buy a smartphone that had the wifi calling feature, not cheap, and that is what I currently have but this last week there was a storm that took out the power for two days and all internet for nearly six days. With no internet there was no wifi calling. The internet outage was many square miles of central Brittany. Many shops, and services were shut down because they had no way to deal with card purchases. ATM points were affected as well as petrol pumps, etc. The only services that remained functional were those with satellite links for their business data. I assume this will be the case during a modern war. Makes you think. I am told that mobile comms in other parts of the country were still working while we in the north were experiencing 19th century living.
 
Spacehonker said:
Thankyou Matt. You certainly sound knowledgable on the subject. I was with the dreaded Credit Aggravation when I first arrived here but finally saw the light and made my escape. Running Apps requires a smartphone I think, and since there is no coverage here they would be of no use. When the femtocell service went belly up I was forced to buy a smartphone that had the wifi calling feature, not cheap, and that is what I currently have but this last week there was a storm that took out the power for two days and all internet for nearly six days. With no internet there was no wifi calling. The internet outage was many square miles of central Brittany. Many shops, and services were shut down because they had no way to deal with card purchases. ATM points were affected as well as petrol pumps, etc. The only services that remained functional were those with satellite links for their business data. I assume this will be the case during a modern war. Makes you think. I am told that mobile comms in other parts of the country were still working while we in the north were experiencing 19th century living.
Click to expand...
I’m a former mobile phone engineer that moved to rural Nouvelle Acquitaine 5 years ago and had to figure out household comms with only a ligne fixe and almost no Orange mobile coverage.

Have you checked to see if your house has any Free or SFR coverage? Very occasionally, you’ll find a spot with no Orange coverage, but decent coverage from another operator.
 
Incidentally, from memory femtocells either require the scraps of a signal to gather up and boost or more regularly like with the old vodafone suresignal they used an internet backbone.

Basically they don't really offer a system that creates a signal out of thin air, thats satellite.

It might seem like overkill but if the service is so bad there it might be worth considering starlink, I was surprised by how reasonably priced/fast it is for what it actually is.. I remember when satellite stuff was just not a consideration at all for normal people.

It's not "cheap" as such but once you've factored in the equipment cost £75 per month for a fibre-ish speed isn't that far off what I'm paying now.
 
Since the internet has come back on I have done nothing else but research alternatives. According to the Starlink mounting requirements I can not offer a clear view of their satellite array. There were three cheaper satellite services out there but none of the four actually offer a landline type (voip) phone service, only a fast internet. Also the cheapest of the lot work out at three times what I am paying now for ADSL and a separate mobile contract.

My old femtocell thing did in fact work via the internet ADSL modem so when the internet went down, so did my mobile.

After all my enquiries I believe my only option (other than moving house) is to plead with the bank and other entities to send me their blasted security codes by internet and not SMS. If they refuse to understand the fact that not everyone is born with a smartphone in their hand I will have to find another way to do business.

Thanks to all who have contributed to this thread. I am now hitting the "unwatch" button.
 
What a strange conclusion when wifi calling is the obvious solution?

Who is doing internet banking during a power cut lol.
 
I find your response a little strange.
I don't see how wifi calling can work if there is no internet. The power was down for two days, and after it came on there was still no internet for a further four days. So no comms for a full six days. There are many people living here in the wilderness and many who might need access to emergency services, etc. It seems a little odd that in 2023 this simple service is so unreliable at a time when people are spending more and more on their connection and the devices they are buying to make use of it.
 
Spacehonker said:
I find your response a little strange.
I don't see how wifi calling can work if there is no internet. The power was down for two days, and after it came on there was still no internet for a further four days. So no comms for a full six days. There are many people living here in the wilderness and many who might need access to emergency services, etc. It seems a little odd that in 2023 this simple service is so unreliable at a time when people are spending more and more on their connection and the devices they are buying to make use of it.
Click to expand...

I don't even get what you want tbh..

You can't create a mobile signal yourself, the only route is either WiFi or a femtocell, they're bother internet based so are essentially the same thing.

Which is why I said WiFi calling. If your comms are so essential which I get they are in the circumstances where you've fallen down the stairs or something then you need to get either a satellite phone or satellite internet service and a battery backup.

If it's to get codes to do internet banking etc on the odd occasion you have a power outage then you need to develop some patience.

I mean, what is your perfect solution that is actually achievable here?
 
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