BT recorded an incredible 31,000,000 nuisance calls in a single week in the run up to Christmas, with more than 12,000,000 relating to ‘accident claims’. In an attempt to combat these frustrating and often time wasting calls, BT is launching ‘BT Call Protect’, a new service which aims to identify rogue numbers.
Numbers that make unusually high volumes of calls will be flagged up, with any future calls being automatically diverted into a junk voicemail inbox. Incredibly, the system is able to continue to block nuisance callers even if they change their number.
Affecting all industries
TalkTalk and Vodafone already successfully operate similar systems with the former currently blocking 92,000,000 calls each month, twice the amount it blocked in 2015. As the frequency of nuisance calls grows, genuine calls from trustworthy companies can get lost in the ‘noise’ of constant incoming calls, something the government is acutely aware of.
Governmental support
Matt Hancock, the Minister for Digital and Culture has welcomed BT’s new technology, stating “Nuisance callers are a terrible blight on society and government and industry are working together to crack down on them”. He went on to say “We’ve forced companies to display their numbers when they call you, made it easier to prosecute those involved in making the calls, and increased the maximum fines up to £500,000.”
The Telephone Preference Service (TPS) is another method for consumers to stop unwanted calls, but scammers often base themselves abroad so they do not have to comply with the TPS’ regulations.
Planet Numbers is proud to state that we will never make unsolicited calls of any nature.
