It's a real conundrum. There's definitely no usable signal here, hasn't been since we first started building the house here, and I've expended way too much time and money on trying to get one, using a pole mounted directional antenna and repeater system (which stopped working when we took the scaffolding down and the antenna ended up about ten feet lower).
Either the car can receive SMS over WiFi, as my wife's phone can, or it's somehow able to get a glimmer of a signal that I couldn't detect when I had a borrowed spectrum analyser here, back when I was playing around to try and determine what frequency repeater might work. There is a possibility that it may be able to connect via the new ESN microcell that EE installed at the end of the valley about a year ago, perhaps. The group of us down here that can't get a signal have been lobbying to try and get EE to allow public use of this mast, as we know that this has happened in other no signal areas where EE have installed ESN microcells. We've been told that the ESN mast will allow public connectivity for 999 calls, not something any of has yet tried, though!
I can't receive SMS messages on my phone here, even leaning outside an upstairs window, holding the phone high in the air. I tried this before switching banks, when our old bank (Santander) switched to using a texted code for online banking verification. It may be possible that there's some sort of deal between Tesla and EE that allows their wake up system to use the EE ESN masts, perhaps. Might explain what's going on, but I can't think of any way to check this theory out.
