BT’s new phone blocks nuisance calls

With its BT6500 phone, which British telco BT Group plc (BT)  unveiled in the UK, users will now be able to block nuisance calls from payment protection insurance pushers, dodgy sales calls from outside the UK and irritating ''silent'' calls.

The company said the device would block 80 per cent of unwanted calls.

The phone can bar all calls from "international" and "withheld" numbers, and numbers without a caller ID. 

Subscriber would be able to bar up to 10 specific numbers, nuisance calls from known numbers can be automatically blocked.

The device would also be available to subscribers to whom BT is not a service provider.

Blocked calls would get silently routed to the answering machine so genuine callers could leave a message, unless they were from a specific number blocked by the subscriber.