Britain’s biggest mobile networks have agreed to overhaul their systems to stop scammers using fake numbers to impersonate banks and government departments.
As ministers seek to stem the growing tide of AI-driven fraud, BT, EE, Vodafone, Three, Virgin Media O2, Sky, TalkTalk and Tesco Mobile have signed a new telecoms charter with the Home Office.
Together, the group has committed to blocking foreign call centres from spoofing UK numbers within the next year and to rolling out new call tracing tools to help police identify scam operations.
The agreement, signed at the BT Tower, comes as the scale of fraud continues to climb.
Figures from UK Finance show that criminals stole more than £629m in the first half of 2025, up three per cent on the same period last year, across more than two million reported cases
Investment and romance scams recorded the sharpest increases, with losses of nearly £100m and £20m, respectively.
Networks under pressure over rising scams
Under these new measures, calls from overseas will be clearly marked as such, stopping bad actors from disguising themselves behind local or official-looking numbers.
Approximately 96 per cent of mobile users decide whether to answer based on the number displayed, according to government data.
New call tracing technology will also provide police with better intelligence on domestic scam operations. Meanwhile, mobile firms have pledged faster support for victims, reducing response times to two weeks.
Fraud minister Lord Hanson said the reforms would “strip away the tools scammers use to cheat people out of their hard-earned cash,” adding that the government wanted to make the UK “the hardest place in the world for scammers to operate.”
The Home Office stated that the commitments would also enhance data sharing between networks and law enforcement, enabling regulators to identify which providers are failing to prevent suspicious traffic.
AI detection and rising threats
The measures come amid a surge in AI-enabled scams.
Criminals are increasingly using AI to clone voices, generate deepfake videos and scale up fraudulent calls and messages.
A recent survey by scam detection firm Hiya found that one in four UK consumers received a deepfake voice call in the past year, with the average loss among victims who were tricked topping £13,000.
Virgin Media O2 announced this month that it had blocked one billion fake texts so far this year, while BT stated that its network now prevents around three million scam calls every day through automated screening systems.
Claire Gillies, chief executive of BT’s consumer division, said the new charter was “an important and timely intervention” that would help the sector “collaborate at pace to protect the nation from this growing crime.”
Vodafone and Three said the initiative would “strengthen how we work across the industry and with the government to stay one step ahead of criminals.”
Industry and government share responsibility
Executives from across the telecoms sector stressed that the scale of the challenge required a joint effort.
Brian Webb, chair of the Communications Crime Strategy Group at BT, said: “Fraud is a threat to us all, and so we must all act to tackle it. The actions we’ve agreed will deliver real change – from expanding trusted data sharing to using artificial intelligence responsibly.”
Virgin Media O2’s fraud director, Murray Mackenzie, added that the company has blocked over a billion scam texts and flags 50 million scam calls every month, but noted that “no industry alone can completely prevent fraud.”
The government’s new charter builds on cooperation with the US to sanction overseas scam networks and follows earlier steps in the ‘plan for change’ to unite telecoms and banking sectors against fraud.
But experts have warned that technology upgrades alone will not solve the problem.
UK Finance stated that AI was enabling criminals to “enhance tried and tested tactics more quickly, at a greater scale, in different languages and to greater effect.”
As the use of deepfakes and cloned voices grows, both government and industry face a race to keep defences ahead of the scammers’ next move.