Crackdown on 'silent calls' nuisance

Ofcom is to ban companies from using technology that leads to silent calls more than once a day to individual households.

More than 70 per cent of consumers who have complained about silent calls received two or more in a day from the same firm, Ofcom said yesterday.

The calls were often made over periods of days or even weeks.

Ofcom believes the fault lies with call centre technology that can mistake a "live" consumer for an answering machine, cutting off the call without the person answering hearing anything.

The new rules will prevent a company using answer machine detection equipment more than once a day unless a call centre agent is on hand to answer.

This would mean that consumers currently worst affected should no longer receive repeated silent calls over the course of a day, the communications regulator said.