What if the cold calling is really over? If call centers don’t stop prospecting by 2023, it’s now possible for everyone to spot them, and better yet, avoid them.
Since January 1, the French Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (Arcep) has implemented a new numbering plan. This means that each type of service has been categorized so that it can be assigned more easily and consistently. For example, this plan guarantees that a mobile phone number begins with 06.
Calls to 06 and 07 are prohibited
As specified by Arcep, commercial calls must be made from numbers beginning with: 0162, 0163, 0270, 0271, 0377, 0378, 0424, 0425, 0568, 0569, 0948 and 0949 in metropolitan France. Added to this are the beginnings of numbers specific to the Overseas Territories: 09475 (Guadeloupe, Saint Martin, Saint Barthélemy), 09476 (Guyana), 09477 (Martinique), as well as 09478 and 09479 (Reunion, Mayotte).
Please note that the use of numbers in 06 or 07 is now prohibited in this context. Therefore, any telephone inquiry from a number using such a prefix should be avoided, at the risk of running into a corrupt service provider. The same applies to any telephone inquiry made from a number whose prefix is not part of the list provided by Arcep.
As the site points out Next INpact, the list of numbers dedicated to commercial offers provided by the official site of the French administration (service-public.fr) is incorrect. The public portal explains (erroneously) that the numbers that begin with 0937, 0938 and 0939 are the ones used by call centers. These are actually “multipurpose numbers that can be used for exchanges with a technical platform.”
More specifically, calls to these lines are now coming from people like package delivery people or VTC drivers. Therefore, everyone will have an interest in not blocking these numbers.
Source: BFM TV
