Having trouble getting signal on your phone? This could be why

It's fair to say that we here in Ireland love being cosy.

It tends to be freezing here for at least nine months of the year, meaning as a nation we're obsessed with blankets, fluffy socks, putting the fire on and having heavy-duty insulation on the house. Now it turns out that our need for warmth could be interfering with our phone signals. As more and more homes are now being built with strong insulation to keep heat in and energy bills down, mobile reception is being affected. Comreg says that things like PVC windows and foil in insulation can impact on signal. "The combined effect of the use of more heat-efficient building materials and a great increase in overall mobile voice and data traffic has contributed to a deterioration in the perceived quality of indoor mobile performance in many homes," the telecoms watchdog has said. The issue is that insulation is designed to keep electromagnetic energy in but can also affect radio energy. Comreg recommends that people with weak signal use 'wifi calling' if they can't get signal in their homes, but the only network to have rolled this out is Eir. Another solution is to get a mobile repeater, a type of amplifier to boost reception.