Bloctel

» see bloctel.gouv.fr as it lived, on the wayback machine

~ the eulogy ~

Bloctel was a list of French phone numbers whose owners did not want to be called. You registered. Telemarketing companies were then legally obliged to buy the list and scrub their campaigns against it before dialing anybody. That was the whole product.

The Hamon consumer law of 17 March 2014 created the obligation and the service opened on 1 June 2016, run under state contract by a company called Opposetel. Uptake was immediate. Two million numbers went on in the first three months. By February 2017 there were three million registrants covering roughly seven million lines.

I have never had a French phone number, so this is a product I know only through its paperwork. With Bloctel the paperwork is the entire story, because what killed it was not indifference but a better law.

~ the dossier ~

~ why it never worked ~

A consumer magazine surveyed people who had registered. Forty-seven percent reported no drop in calls at all. Only fifteen percent said it had made a real difference. The reasons were structural rather than administrative. Bloctel only bound companies inside French jurisdiction that bothered to comply. The worst of the calling was already coming from offshore rooms working off stolen lists.

The contract also changed hands twice in ten years. Opposetel ran it until 2021. Worldline took over on 10 August 2021 and then moved it to a subsidiary called Consoprotec in July 2024. A public service that gets re-tendered that often is usually not one anybody is proud of.

~ what replaced it ~

Law number 2025-594 of 30 June 2025 was written mostly about fraud in public subsidies. It carried the clause that ended cold calling in France. From 11 August 2026 a company may not phone you to sell you something unless you have said yes in advance or unless you are already its customer. The default flipped from opposition to consent.

A register of people who object has no function once objecting is the standing assumption, so Bloctel closed on the day the law took effect. The site at bloctel.gouv.fr is still up. It serves one paragraph saying the service has ended and citing the law number that ended it. Below that sits a link to the consumer-protection directorate for the new rules.

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