A new free service will be launched by BT later this year, which will see the company divert millions of nuisance calls automatically to a junk voicemail box.
From today onwards, customers can pre-register to indicate their interest in being a part of the service.
A staggering 25 million unwanted calls will hopefully be rooted out each week, being diverted to a junk voicemail box instead.
This will be done through the use of huge computing power, as huge amounts of live data need to be analysed. A team from BT will monitor calls received by its 10 million customers, looking to identify patterns which can be used to divert unwanted calls away.
This type of free service is already provided by Talk Talk, but BT following suit would mean a significant increase in the number of people being able to avoid nuisance calls.
John Petter, chief executive of BT Consumer, said: “Nuisance calls are one of the great annoyances of modern life. We are giving control of the landline back to our customers and removing a major hassle and grief for millions of customers.”
“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.”
Approximately 75 per cent of customers receive at least one cold call each month, research carried out by Which? found out, often about mis-sold PPI and personal injury claims.
