http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-24493732

It's a pointless thing, the TPS. I still get calls, and report them, and if I am lucky, I get either a letter or an email which tells me that they could not trace the company concerned because I had not given enough information. The fact that I give the company name, time and number is beside the point. It's an industry regulating itself, which is never a good idea.

I try and avoid all calls which do not have a number. Thankfully I have caller ID, which really should be free for all customers, not a pricey add on.

Note the important added qualification. Which, when international VoIP calls cost a small fraction of a penny a minute, renders the TPS an utter irrelevancy.

What should be the case is that every UK telephone service provider should be required to provide (for a small charge, I'm not being unfair to them) a service where each subscriber can block all calls apart from those they put on a whitelist. Or at least, a service where subscribers can block international, VoIP and calls which don't provide valid caller ID info. Blocking those three things would stop 99% of cold calls.

In fact, tbh, I'm genuinely surprised one of the telco's doesn't offer those kind of services now. MIllions of people would move their land line service to a provider who gave them the ability to block the majority of cold calls. Yet none of them apparently do. Another example where the idiom that 'the market always works in the customer's best interests' turns out to be utter drivel.

BT used to call that their privacy pack, and it was free. I think it was deemed against human rights of the spammers so they had to stop.

Why should you pay for it? It would be automated so be unbelievably cheap to run.

You can get filter boxes which let you answer the phone if jt's on a white list, or hold or reject calls from other sources.

I think having a number which is, and has always been, ex-directory is more useful then the TPS.
Though the TPS have helped me out once, they can do nothing about call centres in other countries calling you and they can do nothing about scammers getting your number and calling you.

Many use autodiallers. They just crank through every number combination, so you'll get called regardless of how ex-directory you are.

Maybe, but I think they must use bought lists of valid numbers too. Everyone I know who's always been ex-directory seems to get less scam calls than those who's number is in the phone book.

We are ex directory, and we get a lot of dead calls - these are created by autodiallers, and the network at the call centre is unable to connect to a person at their end.

Lol, it's an apparatus that matches willing buyers to willing sellers, not a religion. Your sense of drama is laudable, but you are off target again.

If they blocked VOIP and international calls, I'd never get to talk to my family again. We have VOIP here and we are international, plus I use my free SkypeOut minutes to call my family. For anybody with relatives or friends living abroad, such a block would be useless. You could white list their numbers, but if they are using international phone shops or things like Skype out, they will be using different numbers every time they call, or the ID will be blocked.

You still have to give out your number for many reasons to companies - contact when something arrives, garage calling back when your car is ready to collect etc. These numbers will be sold on.

I'm only talking about blocking VOIP connections to landline phones, so skype of itself would still be useful. And they could always call you. Plus (as I said) I was proposing an opt-in service. People with relatives abroad would either have to put up with the cold calls or make other arrangements to receive calls from their relatives. There are actually plenty of alternative means of communication.

You cannot stop people making cold calls. That is a practical reality. They are beyond UK (or even EU) legal authority and making the calls costs them effectively nothing. All you can do is stop people receiving them.

You'd need some sort of white list for Voip. My office use Voip to phone me.