UK signs Telecoms Charter to curb spoofed calls within a year

The UK Government and major mobile network operators signed a Telecoms Charter on Wednesday that aims to eliminate call spoofing within a year and make it harder for foreign call centres to impersonate banks and other trusted organisations. The agreement, signed at the BT Tower, commits networks to upgrade infrastructure, roll out advanced call tracing and deploy artificial intelligence to identify and block suspicious calls and texts, while increasing data sharing with police and shortening support times for victims.

Signatories include BT and EE, Vodafone and Three, Virgin Media O2 and a number of other carriers and industry bodies. Under the plan, networks will upgrade systems so that calls originating overseas are clearly identified to customers, and will implement call traceback procedures that follow a call upstream through intermediate providers until its source is found. The charter also sets targets for faster help to victims, with phone companies committing to reduce response times to around two weeks and to provide specialist assistance and staff training.

Officials said the measures are designed both to reduce the volume of scam calls reaching consumers and to give...