Open call for evidence

Anonymous access to phone numbers and call routing for fraud

Published 15 July 2026

About this call for evidence

This call for evidence (CFE) begins on 15 July 2026 and ends on 7 October 2026.

This call for evidence seeks input from organisations and individuals with relevant experience of access to UK telephone numbers.

How to respond

You can respond online or send your response to: telecomscfe@homeoffice.gov.uk

If feedback can only be provided by paper, please send responses to:

Call for evidence telecoms fraud
Fraud Policy Unit
6th Floor
Peel Building
Home Office
2 Marsham Street
London
SW1P 4DF

Please respond by 7 October 2026.

Enquiries

Enquiries (including requests for alternative formats) should be sent to: telecomscfe@homeoffice.gov.uk

Ministerial foreword

The UK faces a rapidly evolving fraud threat that causes profound harm to individuals, businesses, and the wider economy. Fraud is now the largest volume crime in England and Wales (46% of crime in the crime survey), ^{[footnote 1]} with an estimated economic and social cost of £14.4bn ^{[footnote 2]}. That is why we published the Fraud Strategy 2026–29 earlier this year, setting out a comprehensive framework for preventing fraud, protecting the public and pursuing offenders.

Telecommunications is a key vector exploited by fraudsters, and the strategy therefore commits us to several actions to identify and address vulnerabilities across the telecoms ecosystem.

This call for evidence is one of those Fraud Strategy actions. It seeks to ensure we are identifying and understanding risks in the numbering ecosystem as they emerge, before considering what, if any, targeted and proportionate mitigations may be appropriate.

We welcome contributions from stakeholders across the telecoms sector and beyond. Your evidence will play a crucial role in shaping the next phase of government action to protect the public and strengthen the resilience of the UK’s communications infrastructure against fraud.

Lord Hanson of Flint

Minister for Fraud

Introduction

This call for evidence looks at how criminals use the UK telephone system to carry out fraud. It focuses on situations where criminals:

• set themselves up as telecoms providers, or
• exploit the services of other telecoms providers to make and route calls at scale

This includes two main things:

• accessing phone numbers (eg through allocation, sub-allocation, or resale)
• getting access to the systems that route calls across networks. (including through commercial arrangements)

There are concerns that it can be quick, cheap and relatively easy to access telecoms services, including anonymously and without strong identity checks. This creates opportunities for fraud, especially where there is limited visibility of who is behind calls.

This CfE aims to understand:

• how this happens in practice, and
• where safeguards may need to be strengthened

Government, regulators and industry have already taken some steps to address these risks. For example, Ofcom has strengthened Know Your Customer checks for number suballocation, which helps to stop criminals from accessing UK numbers to make scam calls. Ofcom has also strengthened its guidance on Calling Line Identification facilities to tackle scam calls from UK numbers (real or ‘spoofed’), including requiring blocking of calls from UK fixed numbers coming from abroad (except in a limited number of legitimate use cases). Most recently, it launched a consultation on how to identify calls that spoof UK mobile numbers.

In November 2025, the government published the Telecoms Fraud Sector Charter setting out over fifty actions across the sector, including preventing scam calls. In the new Fraud Strategy 2026–29, the government committed to address the easy access to UK phone numbers, with weak identification checks, to enable scam calls.

While criminals may access numbers or services as end users (e.g. buying a SIM card in a shop), this CfE doesn’t include that. This focuses in particular on actors gain access to number allocation and routing systems for use in scam calling.

Scope of the call for evidence

This CfE focuses on number-based communications and associated routing, including:

Telephone numbers

Numbers from the UK National Telephone Numbering Plan used for voice calls or messaging.

Access pathways

Mechanisms through which numbers and services are obtained, including:

• direct allocation by Ofcom
• sub-allocation or resale through communications providers (CPs)
• online portals, wholesalers, and intermediaries

Call routing and interconnection

The technical and commercial arrangements that enable calls to be carried across networks, including:

• interconnection agreements between providers
• wholesale voice services (e.g. SIP trunks)
• traffic routing through intermediaries

Enabling technologies

Systems and services used to originate or route calls, including:

• hosted diallers softswitches
• wholesale voice platforms

What is not in scope

This CfE does not cover:

• messaging apps like WhatsApp or Microsoft Teams
• encrypted platforms
• types of fraud not involving phone numbers or call routing
• retail acquisition of numbers by individual consumers (e.g. buying a SIM card)

These areas fall outside the scope as they involve different regulatory, technical, and policy frameworks.

The problem

There are concerns that criminals can:

• present themselves as legitimate telecoms providers
• exploit gaps in onboarding, due diligence, or contractual arrangements; and
• use these positions to originate, route, or obscure fraudulent traffic

At present, the scale, nature, and impact of these vulnerabilities are not fully understood.

This CfE therefore seeks to:

• build robust evidence of these risks
• identify proportionate measures to improve accountability

Questionnaire

About you

Full name

Job title or capacity in which you are responding to this consultation exercise (for example, member of the public)

Company name / organisation (if applicable)

Address

Postcode

If you are a representative of a group, please tell us the name of the group and give a summary of the people or organisations that you represent.

Section 1: Gaps in access and routing of numbers

Q1. Where are there gaps or weak controls in how telecoms providers obtain or use UK numbers?

Q2. Are there routes that allow providers to access or route numbers with limited or no verification?

Q3. To what extent can providers bypass or avoid existing controls?

Q4. Are there particular parts of the ecosystem where controls are weakest?

Q5. What evidence is there of the scale of these gaps being exploited (e.g. number of providers, volume of numbers, or traffic involved)?

Section 2: How these gaps enable fraud

Q6. How are weaknesses in number access or call routing used to carry out scams (e.g. spoofing, impersonation, bulk calling)?

Q7. How do criminals combine access to numbers and routing to scale scam activity?

Q8. What role do tools or services (e.g. hosted diallers, SIP trunks, reselling platforms) play in enabling this?

Q9. Is there evidence of organised or repeated exploitation of the same gaps across multiple providers or services?

Q10. What is known about the scale and impact of this activity (e.g. call volumes, reach, financial harm)?

Section 3: Possible solutions

Q11. What regulatory interventions should be considered? Please outline benefits costs and proportionality considerations.

Q12. What legislative interventions should be considered? Please outline benefits, costs and proportionality considerations

Q13. What industry interventions should be considered? Please outline benefits costs and proportionality considerations.

Q14. What approaches have other jurisdictions taken to address similar risks?

Q15. What risks (e.g. Unintended consequences) could arise from potential interventions?

Confidentiality

Information provided in response to this consultation, including personal information, may be published or disclosed in accordance with the access to information regimes (these are primarily the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA), the Data Protection Act 2018 (DPA), the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Environmental Information Regulations 2004).

If you want the information that you provide to be treated as confidential, please be aware that, under the FOIA, there is a statutory code of practice with which public authorities must comply and which deals, amongst other things, with obligations of confidence. In view of this it would be helpful if you could explain to us why you regard the information you have provided as confidential, (e.g commercially sensitive data). If we receive a request for disclosure of the information we will take full account of your explanation, but we cannot give an assurance that confidentiality can be maintained in all circumstances. An automatic confidentiality disclaimer generated by your IT system will not, of itself, be regarded as binding on the Home Office.

The Home Office will process your personal data in accordance with the DPA and in the majority of circumstances, this will mean that your personal data will not be disclosed to third parties.

The Home Office may share responses with the Department for Science Information and Technology (DSIT), HM Treasury (HMT) and the regulator, Ofcom. All responses can be anonymised with any personal data removed prior to sharing.

Please do not provide third-party personal data in your responses.

Copyright

© Crown copyright 2020

This publication is licensed under the terms of the Open Government Licence v3.0 except where otherwise stated.

Where we have identified any third party copyright information you will need to obtain permission from the copyright holders concerned.

Footnotes

1. CSEW, YE December 2025 ↩

2. Economic and social cost of fraud 2023 to 2024 ↩