Tired of spam calls? In Spain they’ve found the solution

Most mobile users are familiar with it. The phone rings from an unknown number and on the other end is an aggressive salesperson or a more or less creative scammer.

In Germany, both services such as Clever Dialer and the governmental Bundesnetzagentur are reporting a significant increase in spam calls, and the picture is similar across much of Europe.

Apps and filters have long been offered on the phone itself, but many users never use them. Others switch phones, forget to install the filters again and end up back at square one. At the same time, the methods are becoming more sophisticated and the numbers keep changing.

In Spain, the patience of one of the country’s largest telecom groups has now run out. MasOrange, the group behind several well-known mobile brands on the Spanish market, is trying a different approach and is building spam protection into the network itself.

An invisible filter in the mobile network itself

MasOrange has launched a feature called “Llamada visible”, which translates to a “visible call”.

The idea is simple. When a call comes in to the customer, the telco’s system assesses whether the number appears to be spam or pure commercial telemarketing.

The difference compared to classic solutions lies in the location. Filtering takes place directly in the telecom company’s infrastructure and not on the individual phone.

The feature is being rolled out to both private and business customers at no extra cost. Customers don’t have to turn anything on either. When the phone supports the modern VoLTE standard, the protection is activated automatically.

On the screen, the call can be flagged so the user can see that it is likely to be spam. This makes the decision simple. You can choose to take the call anyway or reject it immediately.

The solution is based on a collaboration with Hiya, a number analysis company that uses both network data and artificial intelligence to identify suspicious calls.

The urgency of the problem in Spain is demonstrated by Hiya’s own report on call threats, which estimates that an average Spaniard receives around 15 unwanted calls per month, according to Gamestar.de in its review of the initiative.

A possible template for the rest of Europe

The fact that MasOrange chooses to embed protection in the network could become a benchmark for other countries. If network-based solutions become standard across multiple providers, customers can get some basic protection without fiddling with apps or settings on every phone.

The initiative in Spain shows that telecom companies can actually do more than just warn in newsletters and on websites.

The question now is whether other European companies will follow suit. If the Spanish trial proves to work consistently over time, ‘visible calls’ could become a new minimum requirement for customer protection.