Certain types of building materials such as granite, foil backed plaster board (used in bathrooms and kitchens), large steel beams, solid stone walls etc etc can wreak havoc with a mobile phone signal, especially if you are in a rural location where the mobile signal is not the strongest at the best of times.

My house was built in 1850 and benefits from substantial sand stone walls and lots of other beautiful materials that all seem to conspire to block the already poor mobile phone signal. The rural location albeit only 5 miles from Perth, is a mobile signal black spot.

In the kitchen / family room where we have a 1.5 ton steel AGA and a 27 foot long steel I Beam holding up the outside wall, there is a mobile signal black hole i.e. not one bar of signal, nothing.

With four smart phone savvy teenagers and a wife with an iPhone, the lack of mobile facilities in the main room of the family home was, to say the least, a problem area.

Our ADSL broadband is provided by Rural Communication Solutions Ltd who specialise in difficult rural ADSL connections. Because we are at the end of a line that strung from telegraph poles and because of the cable run distance from the exchange, BT basically washed their hands. Thankfully, RCS know what they are about and we now enjoy a 4 to 6 meg download with 600 Kbts up.

So onto the main reason for the article. The Vodaphone Sure Signal works by creating a private mobile phone mast in your home or office and then uses the broadband ADSL or cable to carry voice, texts and 3G data. It can support up to 4 concurrent calls but you can register up to 30 handsets with each Sure Signal.

Set up is pretty straight forward but requires patience as it can take up to an hour for the Sure Signal unit to contact the Vodaphone Mothership to get it’s setting etc. Once the Sure Signal has finished it’s configuration is ready for business, it very kindly sends each registered handset a text which I have to say came a bit of a shock to suddenly have a phone beep with a text after years of nothing!

Having lived with the Sure Signal for a couple of weeks now, I can honestly say that it works very well and is a great solution BUT it is very dependent on the quality of the broadband that it is connected to.

The unit cost £50 from Amazon and has brought peace, at least with respect to mobile connectivity, to our household.

Alas it only works with Vodaphone handsets but you can of course change mobile phone provider whilst keeping you mobile number as my wife did.