Culture, Media and Sport CommitteeSupplementary written evidence submitted by BT

Note on response to question asked at Culture, Media and Sport Committee Nuisance Calls inquiry, on Tuesday 3 September 2013

Further to my appearance before the Committee, and as promised during the session, I am sending you this note to follow up on a question I was asked at the session on 3 September. I promised to check further into what Paul Farrelly MP asked: “Could I ask you what internal estimates you have made in BT of the revenue contribution of spam calls to your voice telephony business?”

In response I can say that we do not estimate the revenue to our business from nuisance calls. It is impossible to determine the nature of each and every call made across our network, many of which do not originate from BT systems or even the UK, and it would be unlawful to do so without legal authorisation. Nuisance calls are in fact a significant cost to our business: we provide a helpline, online and written advice to customers, tracing in some cases and we continue to invest in network and telephone handset technology to combat this issue.

Many of our people also spend significant time working with regulators, consumer organisations and other bodies either leading or working on initiatives aimed at stamping out this inconvenience to people. It goes without saying that we would rather see this problem disappear altogether than consider any potential gain from it.

September 2013