Sky Tackles Nuisance Calls With Talk Shield Screening Service

Sky is attempting to tackle the issue of nuisance phone calls with a free call screening service that enables users to block unwanted calls for the likes of PPI or double glazing before their phone even rings.

Sky Talk Shield will be free for all Sky Talk customers and gives users control over their landline by letting them choose to answer the calls they want and block the ones they don’t before they are connected.

The service, which will be available from 9th June, will either block cold callers automatically or let users listen to who’s on the line via a recorded message of the caller’s name before deciding whether to accept or block the call.

Nuisance callers

After hearing the message users can; accept the call for one time only, accept the call and add the caller to their ‘Star List’, reject the call and add the number to their ‘Block List’ or send the call to their Sky voicemail.

Callers on the Block List will never be able to get through again, while those on the Star List will always get through straight away. These lists can be managed via user’s home phone or their My Sky account.

Lyssa McGowan, Chief Commercial Officer at Sky UK, described Talk Shield as a service that “hands power back to our customers, so they can stop the frustration and inconvenience caused by nuisance calls.”

Sky Talk Shield is similar to BT’s Protect service which was launched earlier this year. BT Protect is an opt-in network level blacklisting service that blocks sources of nuisance calls by redirecting them to a virtual voicemail box.

The company says that if all of its customers use BT Protect, around 30 million such communications would be blocked every week.

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