How to find the best mobile reception at home?

We’ve just moved house. And in the new house I struggle to get mobile phone reception, mostly it’s emergency calls only. Indoors or out. And the battery runs down pretty quickly as the phone’s searching for signal all the time.

The house is in a residential area, we’re on Tesco Mobile which uses the O2 network and according to O2’s checker we should be getting good service indoors and outdoors. According to the Ofcom checker O2 and Vodafone are OK here, EE and Three are a bit flaky. The neighbour on one side says she is with O2 and hers is fine, on the other side they’re with iD (using Three) and they say they’re fine. My sons are both on EE and they can use their phones here.
My phone is an old-ish Moto g(6) play which seems fine almost everywhere except the campsite in Wales where we often go.

I know the obvious thing is to get a new phone on Vodafone, but I’d prefer to get some sort of signal checker before committing. I find it odd that when I take my phone overseas I can see all the available networks in signal strength order when roaming, but not here.

Get a cheap Lebara (Vodafone MVNO) and try it. My son has one at 1p a month for 6 months. It could be your handset too. If the antenna is damaged in some way it might struggle.

Turn on WiFi calling.

Some old phones won’t have this though but most do.

Try WiFi calling first.

Get a cheap Lebara (Vodafone MVNO) and try it. My son has one at 1p a month for 6 months. It could be your handset too. If the antenna is damaged in some way it might struggle

^ this.
We’ve 5 of us on the same deal! 1p/6mth then £6.95/mth afterwards. 12gb/unlimited calls and texts.

Is your handset locked? If not, away you go.

If not, just whatever is cheap.

Well the phone is so old that it doesn’t support WiFi calling so I’ll get one of those Sims and go from there.
I’ve followed links to Lebara but I can’t see a 1p deal on the website. They must have stopped that so I’ll have to get a £5 one. But it’s still worth it to check out the network coverage. Thanks for the help.

Tesco Mobile don’t support WiFi calling

Would an app like Opensignal be of use? You can check position of nearest masts etc – link below for iPhone but think there is an android version as well
https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/opensignal-internet-speed-test/id598298030

I think the issue that bugs me we Open Signal and similar apps is it’s not actually testing the availability of other networks to your phone – it’s doing a connection / speed test or your phone and cross referencing  against a map of other user’s connection tests. Trouble is if the issue is connection in your house, rather than outside your house / in your street / postcode or whatever then there’s not any other data for ‘in your house’

I find it a real irritation when I recce remote locations that I’m going to send a crew back to – I’d like to know if they’ll be contactable but my phone only tells me if my network is available but not anyone else’s.

it seems like it should be trivial for a phone to display what signals are available. My phones unlocked – it’s able to use any sim abd can receive from any network but I can’t see that info

a low tech solution for the OP though is invite a bunch of people round for a party then thrill everyone with a conversation about phones. Better than pot luck trying one sim at a time by yourself

You should be able to get your phone to scan for available newtorks by doing the following:

Pull down the top of the screen to get the settings menu up, the one with the icons like flight mode and WiFi.
Click on the cog icon up the top.
Tap the Connections option.
You should then have one labelled Mobile Networks, tap that.
Network Operators should appear, tap that.
If it comes up with an option to Connect Automatically unselect that and it should then scan for all the available ones, this can take a while. It should then give you a list of them all and the signal quality.

This only works if your phone is unlocked from a network and sometimes you have to pop the SIM card out and reboot the phone so it ‘forgets’ your home network.

TLDR – get a cheap PAYG SIM for each network and test them for a few days in the places you commonly use a cellphone. Then decide on least worst.

We live in a fairly densely populated area.
All the mobile networks are poor indoors here. We used to use Three for our mobiles and have always been given Vodafone on work ones. Both networks were as bad as each other. 1-2 bars of 4G inside in a good day and Daleks & dropouts were common.

WiFi calling changed all that.

Since the advent of 5G and acquisition of a 5G-compatible iPhone I tried PAYG SIMs for each of the networks. I figured empirical testing would be better than signal maps.

All the networks still suck here. Vodafone remains the worst. Then O2, then Three, then EE. Out and about though the ranking changes. O2 was consistently poor for data speeds though. On balance I figured EE or Three seemed the best choice. I got a 1p mobile SIM £10/month. Which is a bit sickening as you can get a great Lebara (Vodafone) SIM deal via MSE.

A year ago K switched to Sky (O2) and I switched to Virgin (Voda I think) after being on EE for ages.

Really surprised to find that audio quality on mobile calls was noticeably worse (and it genuinely seems better back on EE – which really surprised me as I assumed they’d all be using the same codecs and data rates). We’ve a load of steel in the house so indoor mobile reception relies on wifi calling but EE’s implementation of that seems better – the others didn’t seem to hand off reliably between mobile and wifi calling, dropping the call. And Virgin doesn’t support visual voicemail on an iPhone (I very rarely get voicemails but having to call up and press buttons to see who a voicemail is from seems archaic now). Away from home we seemed to have no signal (or no data) in locations that were previously reliable.

We both just switched back (EE sim only £10 a month) as the others just didn’t work as well.

Obviously not a lot of help if your mobile doesn’t support wifi calling, but I’d assumed all the networks were pretty much the same now and there was no disadvantage to MVNO’s. That definitely wasn’t our experience of them.

I went into town this morning and the Three shop handed me a free SIM. I stuck it in an unlocked old handset and I’ve got good signal all over the house.
The next step is waiting for my unlock code from Tesco and deciding between a sim only deal with iD or Three.
I was a bit tempted by the Xiaomi 11 pro 5G they showed me though. Looks a good phone at a budget price…or does somebody have a better idea?

The next step is waiting for my unlock code from Tesco

Phone unlocking? I did not realise this was still a thing.

Good luck @BigJohn

Yes, it’s quite an old Moto. I thought Tesco would have it done in a flash but it takes a while for them. I suppose I could take it to one of the many vape shops and they would do it. My even older Moto was unlocked for me when I bought a local SIM in Hanoi.

The house is in a residential area, we’re on Tesco Mobile which uses the O2 network and according to O2’s checker we should be getting good service indoors and outdoors

Do you live in my house?? Exactly the same here, unless I’m upstairs virtually hanging out of the window.

Signal everywhere else is spot on. We’re also with Virgin for fibre broadband so have a landline for using in the house. We usually forget this and just get angry with our mobiles 🤣🤣

I’ve followed links to Lebara but I can’t see a 1p deal on the website. T

I’ve just gone back to the link, it has indeed ended.

Just reading this as I have some reception issues at home, saw the wifi calling thing and though, “binpot, lets try that”.

Well apparently my phone, moto g9 plus, should have wifi calling but doesn’t. I’m with plusnet which uses EE. Apperantly I might be able to flash it with EE firmware and the function could come back.

What the hell does flashing mean?? (careful now), and what will it actually do to my phone? Not bothered about warrenty as I bought it outright well over a year ago.

@BigJohn,
we dont want your sort around here.

With all my lah-di-dah tales of when we used to live opposite that big factory..

For reference 02 and Vodafone operate a mast sharing arrangement, if you get reception with one network it would be similar on the other. I am not 100% sure but also believe Three are in on that sharing arrangement.

Then you have piggyback firms which may or may not offer benefits like wi-fi calling (if phone supports):
Pinched from Moneysavingexpert:

PROVIDER PIGGYBACKING FIRM
EE Major players: BT Mobile*, Plusnet Mobile*, Utility Warehouse. Smaller firms: 1pMobile*, The Phone Co-op*, Ecotalk, IQ Mobile*, Zevvle, RWG Mobile, To The Moon
O2 Major players: Giffgaff*, Tesco Mobile*, Sky Mobile*. Smaller firm: Lyca Mobile*
Three Major players: iD Mobile*, Smarty*. Smaller firm: FreedomPop*, Honest Mobile, Superdrug
Vodafone Major players: Voxi*, Virgin Mobile* (1). Smaller firms: Asda Mobile*, Lebara Mobile*, Talkmobile*

I live on a hill in the middle of a city. Terrible reception so far with Vodafone and Smarty.

a low tech solution for the OP though is invite a bunch of people round for a party then thrill everyone with a conversation about phones. Better than pot luck trying one sim at a time by yourself

This is what sorted it! A few people round then see who could ring the Indian. The answer was EE.