MSE News: New BT service to divert millions of nuisance calls

Former_MSE_Steve_1

BT is to launch a "breakthrough" new service aimed at diverting nuisance calls, with the telecoms giant redirecting millions of calls automatically and BT customers also able to divert calls themselves....

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'New BT service to divert millions of nuisance calls'

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Pincher

Version 2


The calls get diverted to a Watson (IBM) type artificial intelligence, that keeps them talking, so they are wasting their time for a change.


Version 3


Automated entrapment of conmen, giving boobytrapped accounts so that any attempt to take money can be traced and the perpetrators caught.

Gryphon005

So... what have BT been doing for the last 20 odd years to combat nuisance calls? :mad:

robin58

Such a 'breakthrough' that TalkTalk already do it.

Pincher

"Rogue" numbers will then be diverted to a junkbox




What a wonderful free resource for mass trial of AI programs.


AI programmers are invited to submit talking programs to receive these nuisance calls. The longer the AI can keep the caller talking, the higher the score. What's a good prize? A date with a real woman?


An interesting future development can be comfort talkers for lonely people. The AI could call lonely people that have no friends. The difference is, they are not selling anything.

footyguy

BT customers will also be able to divert calls themselves to the "blacklist".

Is this going to be a free service, or are we going to be charged to process these annoying calls?

Will it handle "number withheld", International" and "number unavailable" calls on an individual basis?
(i.e. not block all of them, just the individual callers the customer selects)

Edit: According to uSwitch, This is Money, et al, it looks like it will be free :money:

http://www.uswitch.com/broadband/news/2016/02/bt_to_blacklist_nuisance_calls/

http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/bills/article-3442025/BT-cracks-cold-callers-free-service-divert-25million-nuisance-calls-week-junk-voicemail-inbox.html

ic

If they do charge for this service, then I can wholeheartedly recommend the call guardian phones: http://www.amazon.co.uk/BT8500-Advanced-Blocker-Cordless-Handset/dp/B00LZTHUJO/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1455381869&sr=8-3&keywords=bt+call+guardian

I got these for my grandparents, configured them to block all numbers that weren't stored in the phonebook, and that has ended the stream of calls they received daily. This was a fairly extreme way of doing it, simply because my grandma has dementia and could never have grasped the full functionality of this phone. It originally appeared on dragon's den - and is best understood by watching the original short presentation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxeGRRyTN-Y

Mister_G

I've had the BT8500 for about four months now and can thoroughly recommend it.

It has successfully blocked every nuisance call - and there have been quite a few!

Ian011

The really useful feature of the BT8500 phone system, and of the trueCall devices it is based on, is that unknown callers are issued with a verbal challenge that they must complete before your phone rings. This ensures that genuine callers still have a chance to get through. Other phone systems do not have this feature and those calls are automatically blocked.

buglawton

How Long before false positives occur? So your building society which witholds it's number (mine does) gets diverted to the spam box when they call you to discuss that mortgage application.

Bay

Gryphon005 wrote: »

So... what have BT been doing for the last 20 odd years to combat nuisance calls? :mad:

I'd like to know the answer to this question.