Use Giff Gaff which operates on the O2 network I believe, terrible to non-existant signal at home on my iphone. Been told you can get either apps or something which connects to home wi-fi to improve this. Anyone with experience of this and what actually might work and help? Otherwise I guess I may need to look at swapping networks to one with better coverage here. Cheers

O2 seem to offer two options;

1. Business customers only, a femto cell: http://service.o2.co.uk/IQ/SRVS/CGI-BIN/WEBCGI.EXE?New,Kb=Companion,question=ref(User):str(Business),CASE=56136
2. Pay monthly/contract customers, a Voice over Wifi app (tugo).

I suspect neither option will work on giffgaff….. so your best bet will probably be to just switch network to someone with better coverage (EE, in all likelyhood)

There are a couple of different types of booster so depending on your preferences one of these might work:

Femtocell – a little box that plugs into a broadband router and creates a 3G network in your house. These are available from all networks.

Voice / text over Wifi. o2 has one of these – it uses wifi and enables calls to be made and received over wifi when the app is open. Three also have one called “Three in Touch” which does the same thing but can also connect to 3’s 800 MHz network to make / receive calls, text and access data on compatible phones. The 800 MHz network only works on some smartphones that have support 800MHz on 4G. A list of handsets is available on the 3 website – the 800MHz signal carries a lot further than 3G at 2100 MHz and is currently being marketed as “supervoice”.

EE probably have the best real world solution. They offer wifi calling without an app – if your phone loses the network and can access a wifi network you can make / receive calls and texts without having to do anything. This works really well in practice to the point you can turn the phone bit off, then turn Wifi on and it will work as normal but retain battery life for longer. Again like 3, this works on compatible handsets. EE have already rolled out most of their 800MHz network but haven’t opened it up to public use yet – they are targeting 99.5% landmass coverage by 2020.

One other solution that works really well is a Cell-Fi. Basically consists of two boxes – put the first one up in your loft and the second one in the part of your house that gets the worst signal and it creates a 3G network without the need for broadband. o2’s 3G coverage is still useless though so there will be large parts of the country where this doesn’t work because o2 still only offer 2G.

ps. rob, your third option is technically illegal in the UK.

why complicate matters over changing providers….

your mega cheap discount deal isnt actually all that cheap once you start buying tech to make up for the networks short falls… cheap for a reason applies here.

-although . i used to live in a house with no mobile signal . it was awesome.

Scrumfled – sorry you’re right and wrong. Unlicensed boosters are indeed illegal but the Cel-Fi is the only “boost” solution approved for use by operators and Ofcom and also used by o2, vodafone and EE with some clients. Cel-Fi is an active booster that adjusts signal power according to strength of the surrounding network – the other boosters don’t do that and are banned as a result.

https://www.cel-fi.co.uk/

doesnt your iPhone just do wifi calling?
EE does this and i presume all providers did?

^ iphone SE does in theory do wifi calling but not on giffgaff, just checked….bah.

Wifi calling isn’t supported on o2 as far as I know – only via the o2 Tu Go app.

I don’t think you can use boosters with Giffgaff, even though they make use of the O2 network.

I have a Vodafone booster and it has worked perfectly. Gone from just about getting a signal if I stand by a front window to full signal throughout the house.

The Cel-Fi ones work fine with the MVNOs on the same Mobile Network Operator i.e. the EE one supports Virgin, the o2 one supports GiffGaff and Tesco mobile etc.

Thanks for the info, as I’m on a monthly sim only package looks like swapping provider to EE is the simplest and most straightforward option. Alllegedly they have good coverage in my area and they also do wifi calling so in theory that should all help. I still can’t understand how Giff Gaff has got a progressively worse signal over a few months; I used to get a few bars by walking about and finding the right spot, now if I’m lucky I might get one bar standing at the bottom of the garden. I thought it might be my new phone but the rest of the family are experiencing it too. Hope EE is better, can’t be any worse that’s for sure.

I’m with EE and have an EE signal booster as there is zero EE (or anyone else) signal in my house.

Call quality does suffer if anyone else is online at the same time as our bandwidth is poor.

Wonder if I should just switch to wi-fi calling instead of using booster?

Weirdly an article in our local paper (a bit like a local version of the DM sometimes) today is all about how the O2 signal (giff gaff uses) has all but disappeared in our area since the New Year. Lots of angry residents/businesses complaining to O2 who supposedly make millions in profit etc etc. They are supposedly trying to rectify, I won’t hold my breath

redstripe – it’s probably part of the cornerstone rollout – o2 and vodafone have a mast sharing agreement and are (very) slowly working across the country removing duplicate masts and the sharing the ones that are left. In some areas this means that existing coverage changes / disappears for good.

We have the O2 (business only, but I don’t know why this is) fem to cell box. It works generally seamlessly but is not 100% reliable. Before this I tried tugo for a bit and found it woefully bad, however this was 2 years ago plus I don’t know whether the app or my phone was to blame. My neighbour has the Vodafone equivalent (not limited to business customers) with similar results to our O2 box.

Im On three and signal is non existant in my house – use a booster thingie they gave me that plugs into my router and been great for 3 years