Since January 1, a new numbering plan has been implemented by Arcep. Thanks to him, it will be much easier to avoid cold calling, forced to use certain numbers.
What if cold calling actually ended? If the call centers will not stop prospecting in 2023, it is now possible for everyone to identify them, and better still, to avoid them.
Since January 1, the French Telecoms Regulatory Authority (Arcep) has set up a new numbering plan. This means that each type of service has been categorized in order to be assigned more easily and consistently. It is for example this plan which guarantees that a mobile phone number begins with a 06.
Calls to 06 and 07 prohibited
As Arcep specifies, commercial calls must therefore be made from numbers starting 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).
Note that the use of numbers in 06 or 07 is now prohibited in this context. Any telephone canvassing from a number using such a prefix should therefore be avoided, at the risk of being faced with a crooked service provider. The same applies to any telephone canvassing carried out 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 (wrongly) that the numbers starting with 0937, 0938 and 0939 are those used by the call centers. These are actually “multipurpose numbers that can be used for exchanges with a technical platform”.
More concretely, calls from these lines now come from people such as parcel deliverers or VTC drivers. Everyone will therefore have an interest in not blocking these numbers.
