BT to launch ‘breakthrough’ service which will divert ‘huge numbers’ of nuisance calls.

BT is to launch a ‘breakthrough’ service that will help the companies 10 million domestic customers avoid nuisance calls on their landlines.

The main source of such calls are those from PPI or personal injury claims companies, silent calls or automated marketing messages.

Recent research by Which? shows that 75 per cent of customers receive an unwanted call each month and BT estimates the new service will enable it to divert up to 25 million unwanted calls a week to a junk voicemail box, stopping them from irritating customers.

BT’s centre in Oswestry will process huge amounts of live data to identify rogue numbers – typically those that make enormous numbers of calls – and to add them to a BT blacklist.

The company says it will drastically reduce the number of nuisance calls to its customers, the blacklist will be expanded if large numbers of customers identify troublesome numbers that they wish to divert.

Customers will also be able to compile their own personal blacklist by adding individual unwanted numbers, as well as nominating whole categories of calls they want to avoid, such as international calls or withheld numbers. BT will then prevent these types of calls from reaching the home.

John Petter, chief executive 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 has previously led the fight to protect its customers from child abuse images on the internet with the development of the Cleanfeed filter.

BT customers can register their interest at www.bt.com/nuisancecalls