Mobile Signal Boosting for Care Homes
Reliable mobile coverage matters in a care home for more than one group of people.
Residents use mobile phones to stay in contact with family and friends. Visitors arrive using their own mobile networks. Staff move throughout the building during the working day, while visiting healthcare professionals, contractors and suppliers may also depend on public mobile connectivity.
Unfortunately, care homes can be challenging buildings for mobile signal.
Older properties may have thick masonry walls and numerous extensions. Newer buildings can use reinforced concrete, insulation and energy-efficient glazing that reduce the radio signal entering the property.
The result can be perfectly usable mobile coverage outside and frustratingly poor service inside.
Litenet surveys, designs and installs commercial mobile coverage systems for care homes and residential care facilities throughout the UK.
Why Care Homes Can Have Poor Mobile Signal
Care homes are rarely simple buildings from a radio perspective.
Some have developed gradually over many years, with extensions, converted houses and different construction materials throughout the property.
Others are purpose-built facilities containing reinforced floors, insulated walls, fire compartments and energy-efficient windows.
All of these can affect how mobile radio signals travel through the building.
Coverage may therefore be very inconsistent.
Reception might have perfectly usable service while bedrooms further inside the property have little or none. Ground-floor areas may work while another wing or floor struggles. Corridors, internal rooms and lower-ground areas can be particularly difficult.
A mobile network coverage map can show what should be available in the surrounding area.
It cannot tell us what is actually happening inside the care home.
Residents, Families, Staff and Visitors All Use Mobile Networks
A care home has a particularly varied group of mobile users.
Residents may use their own phones to call children, grandchildren, friends and relatives.
Family members and other visitors arrive using whichever mobile network they happen to have.
Staff may use mobile devices while moving between bedrooms, offices, communal areas and other parts of the property.
Visiting professionals, contractors, delivery drivers and suppliers may also rely on their own mobile connection while on site.
Not all of these people will be connected to the building's Wi-Fi.
And they may be using several different mobile networks.
That makes public mobile coverage a useful part of the wider communications environment within the building.
Good mobile coverage should complement the care home's Wi-Fi and fixed communications, not be treated as a replacement for them.
We Survey Before We Design
Poor mobile coverage should be measured before equipment is selected.
A professional mobile signal survey allows us to understand the actual radio environment inside and outside the property.
We can establish which mobile networks are available, where signal becomes weak or unusable and which parts of the building genuinely need improvement.
We also look at the property itself.
Different wings, floors, construction materials, roof areas, cable routes and potential equipment locations can all influence the design.
Most importantly, we establish who needs coverage and where they need it.
A care home primarily concerned about one network used by staff may require a different design from a property wanting wider mobile coverage for residents, visitors and employees using several networks.
The system should follow the requirement.
You don't need to know which mobile signal booster you need. That's our job.
Designed Around the Care Home
Installing communications equipment inside an occupied care environment requires practical planning.
Residents remain in the building. Staff still need to work. Visitors continue to arrive.
The design therefore needs to consider more than RF performance alone.
Antenna positions, equipment locations and cable routes should be planned around the building and its day-to-day operation, while installation work can be coordinated with the care home's management and facilities teams to minimise disruption.
Coverage may also need to be prioritised differently across the property.
Bedrooms, lounges, reception areas, offices, corridors and external-facing areas can all have different requirements.
For new-build care homes or major refurbishment projects, considering mobile coverage earlier can make equipment locations, cabling and antenna positions easier to integrate into the finished building.
Installation, Testing and Validation
Litenet can manage the complete process:
Survey. Design. Installation. Commissioning. Testing. Validation. Support.
Once a system has been commissioned, the mobile environment can be measured again to confirm whether coverage has improved in the areas it was designed to serve.
That provides a much better indication of performance than simply checking the number of bars displayed on one mobile phone.
The objective is a properly designed commercial mobile coverage system based on the actual property and its requirements.
Mobile coverage should also be treated appropriately within the wider communications strategy of a care home.
A signal booster can improve access to the public mobile network where suitable donor signal and system conditions exist, but it should not be presented as a substitute for dedicated emergency, nurse-call or other specialist life-safety systems.
That distinction is worth making clearly.