UK ISP BT Soft Launches Free Service to Tackle Nuisance Calls

Nobody likes receiving unwanted marketing calls, unless they’re exceptionally lonely. In keeping with that BT has today launched a new blacklist service, which aims to redirect related calls to a junk voicemail box and thus prevent them from irritating their customers.

The new “proactive intervention” service, which sadly won’t actually be made available to use until towards the end of 2016, aims to harness “huge computing power to analyse large amounts of live data” and “enable network experts at BT’s centre in Oswestry to identify rogue numbers … and add them to a BT blacklist.”

Customers will also be able to identify troublesome numbers and get them added to the list (we assume BT will then check these to ensure that they are indeed being used for abuse). Customers will also be able to make their own personal blacklist, which will include the ability to nominate whole categories of calls to be blocked (e.g. international calls or withheld numbers).

BT will also work to notify industry regulators (e.g. Ofcom, ICO) when they spot numbers that appear to be particularly prone to abuse, which will help to raise public awareness of bad numbers / businesses and push for greater enforcement action.

John Petter, CEO of BT Consumer, said:

“Nuisance calls are one of the great annoyances of modern life. Everyone will have received one. We are delighted to have made this major breakthrough. We are giving control of the landline back to our customers and removing a major hassle and grief for millions of customers.

We have been at the forefront of equipping our customers to defend themselves against the flow of PPI and unwanted marketing calls that has become a flood in recent years.

Now we are able to announce that we are working to identify and tackle huge numbers of those calls in the network.

We are doing our bit. We call on other providers to up their game in the fight against this menace. They can help us to root out the malicious players they may be hosting on their own networks when we identify dodgy and suspicious calling behaviour.”

BT are also one of several telecoms providers to have signed Ofcom’s related Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on Nuisance Calls, which commits them and others to develop new technical measures for “reducing the impact of unlawful nuisance calls on consumers“. The other participating providers include: TalkTalk, EE, Sky Broadband, Gamma Telecom, Virgin Media, Vodafone, Three UK, KCom Group Plc (KC) and O2.

Apparently further details about BT’s new service will be revealed in the future and in the meantime customers can register their interest at: www.bt.com/nuisancecalls .