No signal inside the hotel room or the country house: what you can do

Why the signal stops at the door

Ofcom, the UK telecoms regulator, names the materials directly: traditional thick stone walls and slate roofs, and also newer glazing and the materials used for insulation, can affect indoor signal. In another page it adds thick walls, metal window frames, ceilings, pillars and basement rooms. That covers both ends of a typical trip: the old farmhouse with walls half a metre deep and the new hotel with energy-saving windows.

Location stacks on top. Ofcom points out that hills, buildings and trees between you and the mast affect reception, and country houses tend to sit in valleys, behind trees or at the end of a track. A spot with two bars in the garden can easily become no service two rooms in.

Find where the signal is, then use it from there

Walk the place with the phone in your hand once you arrive. Upstairs rooms, windows and the side of the building that faces the open usually do best; Ofcom suggests the same places for an indoor repeater, near a window or in an upstairs room, where the outdoor signal can be detected.

Then leave the phone there and bring the connection to you. Turn on the personal hotspot on the phone sitting on the window sill and join it from a tablet, a laptop or a second phone in the room. Check that your plan allows sharing; Snoozim's data eSIMs do. Our guide to sharing your mobile data shows how on iPhone and Android. Keep the phone plugged in if you leave it there for the evening, because a hotspot drains the battery.

Calls when the room has Wi-Fi but no signal

Ofcom's suggestion for places with poor coverage but a good Wi-Fi connection is Wi-Fi calling. It is a feature of your home operator: your usual number makes and receives calls over the Wi-Fi network, as long as your operator offers it and allows it abroad. Our guide to Wi-Fi calling abroad covers how to switch it on and what it costs from another country.

The other route is app calls. WhatsApp, FaceTime and similar apps call over whatever data connection you have, the room's Wi-Fi included, and a data-only eSIM keeps WhatsApp working with your usual number. For a phone call to a landline or a business, see calling home with a data-only eSIM. Ofcom also notes that a Bluetooth earpiece often gives better call reception than holding the phone to your ear, which lets you leave the phone at the window while you talk.

When the Wi-Fi is the weak link

In rural houses the Wi-Fi may be slower than the mobile signal at the window. On an iPhone abroad that matters: Apple says Connectivity Assist, the feature that adds mobile data when Wi-Fi is slow, is not used while roaming internationally, so the phone can sit on a weak Wi-Fi network instead of switching. If pages crawl, turn Wi-Fi off and check whether mobile data does better; our article on bars without internet walks through the checks.

If your travel plan can use more than one local network, try choosing another by hand. A different operator's mast may sit on the other side of the hill and reach the house better; manual network selection explains how, and why to set it back to automatic before you leave.

Before you book, and at night

• Ask the host whether there is mobile coverage inside and how good the Wi-Fi is: they know which rooms work.
• Search the reviews for words like signal, coverage or Wi-Fi.
• Download offline maps of the area before you arrive, in case the last stretch has no data.
• In a room with no signal at all, Airplane Mode with Wi-Fi turned back on stops the phone searching all night.

That last point follows Apple's advice for low-signal areas: a phone that keeps hunting for a network uses more battery. Repeaters that boost the signal indoors are a long-term fix for a home, not for a holiday, and they are regulated: in the UK, Ofcom allows only certain models to be installed without a licence. For emergencies, a weak signal is still worth having, so know where it is in the house, and remember that 112 is free to call from fixed and mobile phones everywhere in the EU.