Free coffee won’t save your life - but a mobile signal might

Your office has oat milk, nap pods and a rooftop garden. You can meditate, hydrate and recalibrate before 10am. But if you try to make a phone call - or worse, need to call 999 - good luck.

Somewhere along the way, we decided that ‘a great place to work’ meant free coffee and biophilic design, not the ability to get a mobile signal. In 2025, that’s absurd. The most basic thing anyone wants in a building - on a par with light and heat - is the ability to communicate. Yet across thousands of supposedly ‘smart’ offices, the bars on your phone vanish the moment you step inside.

It’s not a minor irritation. It’s a daily anxiety - and sometimes a real risk.

Think about the dead zones in almost every building: the basement car park, the stairwell, the storage room, the lift. We’ve all been there - mid-call, mid-crisis, or just trying to get a message out - when the signal drops to nothing. Whether you’re an office worker heading to a meeting, a visitor finding your way around, or someone working alone late at night, being able to call for help isn’t a luxury. It’s a necessity.

And still, we accept buildings that can’t even handle a phone call.

There is endless talk about ‘employee wellbeing’, but the inability to connect with the outside world is the opposite of wellbeing. It’s isolation dressed up as sustainability and design. When your child’s school can’t reach you, or a call about an elderly parent goes unanswered, no amount of oat milk can make that better.

Modern buildings are the culprits. We’ve built them to be airtight, energy-efficient and carbon-conscious - but in the process, we’ve accidentally turned them into mobile dead zones. Thick glass, insulation and low-emission materials keep the temperature stable but kill the signal stone dead. Offices have become inadvertent Faraday Cages: perfect at trapping heat, brilliant at blocking connection.

And so, every day, millions of workers gather by stairwells, windows and car parks - the unofficial shrines to mobile signal. The irony is that these same buildings proudly market themselves as ‘digitally enabled”. Smart sensors. IoT lighting. Touchless everything. Except the one technology everyone truly depends on: their phone.

Here’s the thing: we’ve romanticised the wrong perks.

Connectivity isn’t a luxury. It’s not an extra. It’s not a ‘nice to have’. It’s the hidden infrastructure that makes everything else work. Without it, people aren’t just disconnected - they’re unreachable. Unsafe. Isolated.

And the productivity argument is just as strong. Missed calls mean missed business. Lost connections mean lost time. You cannot build ‘flexible working’ cultures inside buildings that refuse to let a phone ring.

The fix, however, is not futuristic or far-fetched.

So how do you actually fix the signal?

For starters, you don’t wait for mobile network operators to solve it. Inside buildings, coverage is nobody’s responsibility unless the building owner makes it someone’s job.

The very best ‘someone’ for that job is what’s known as a neutral host: a specialist provider that designs, installs and operates mobile connectivity inside buildings, working across all mobile networks, in any country.

Companies like Shared Access deal with the consequences on both ends of the spectrum - modern buildings that block mobile signal by design and older ones that were never built to accommodate it. Their role isn’t glamorous, but it’s essential: make mobile connectivity work everywhere, for everyone, all the time.

The technology itself is straightforward. Small, discreet antennas are positioned throughout the building - on ceilings, in stairwells, lifts and corridors - all connected to a central system that distributes mobile signals from every mobile network operator evenly across every floor.

Think of it as Wi-Fi for your phone - without the login screens, expiring passwords or clunky guest networks. No captive portals. No forms. No security theatre. And crucially, no broadcasting your data on a shared network you don’t own or control.

Installation typically begins with a detailed survey, followed by system design and deployment. Once installed, the system is monitored and maintained like any other piece of critical infrastructure.

And what does it cost?

This is where most buildings are still living in the past.

In-building mobile no longer demands enormous upfront investment. Providers like Shared Access operate using an operating-cost model - meaning landlords or occupiers pay a predictable monthly fee rather than funding a major capital project.

In reality, the cost is often less than a year’s spend on office ‘enhancements’ - except this one doesn’t just look good on a brochure. It makes the building usable.

Which makes you wonder why fixing the signal is still seen as optional, while coffee machines are treated as essential.

If we’re serious about wellbeing, flexibility and modern working, then mobile connectivity should be regarded as basic infrastructure - alongside power, heating and water. Not an add-on. Not an afterthought. Not a problem to ignore.

Because employees don’t need another perk.

They need to know that when the phone rings - or when they need to call for help - it will actually connect.

So maybe it’s time to worry less about coffee - and more about connection. That’s the benefit that really changes lives.

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