Bloctel Explained: The French Do-Not-Call List for Businesses and Consumers

If you make outbound calls in France, or you simply want fewer of them, Bloctel is the rule that shapes both sides of the conversation. It is France’s official do-not-call registry: free for consumers who want to opt out of unsolicited sales calls, and mandatory for any company that runs cold-calling campaigns. Here is how it works, what it covers, what it doesn’t, and why respecting it is good for everyone who relies on the phone as a channel.

What is the Bloctel do-not-call registry?

Bloctel is the French do-not-call list. It lets consumers block unwanted commercial calls to their personal numbers, free of charge, under French law. In return, businesses are required to clean their prospecting lists against the registry before calling, so that people who have opted out are left alone.

In principle that might sound like a consumer can shut out every salesperson, marketer, debt collector, or campaigner who picks up the phone. In practice there are clear exceptions. A registered number can still legally be called when:

There is a current contractual relationship between the consumer and the business.
The call concerns the sale of newspapers, periodicals, or magazines (subscriptions to the press).
The caller is a public-sector body, a polling institute, or a non-profit organization.
The consumer freely and unambiguously gave the business their number with the intent of being contacted.

How does Bloctel work?

For businesses

If you run cold-calling campaigns, it is your responsibility to make sure you are not calling consumers who have registered their numbers on Bloctel, unless you fall under one of the exceptions above. That obligation holds whether your own team does the calling or you outsource it to a third party. You also cannot rent or sell lists that contain Bloctel-registered numbers to anyone else.

One detail catches a lot of companies out: even if you hire a third party to clean your prospecting lists, the Bloctel account must be registered in your name and paid for by you. The compliance responsibility stays with you, not your provider.

How do I avoid calling numbers on the Bloctel list?

Opposetel, the operator appointed to run the registry, is responsible for cleaning companies’ calling lists against Bloctel. The service is paid, on a subscription basis.

Every business must run its list through Opposetel before each cold-calling campaign, before handing a calling list to another company, and at least once a month for any campaign that runs longer than 30 days.

Setting up a professional account with Opposetel follows these steps:

Pre-register on Bloctel
- Complete the form with your company details on the official Bloctel site.
- You receive a confirmation email and a username for your account.
Test the service
- Trial the Opposetel service, read the FAQs, and contact the support line if needed.
Choose your subscription
- Pick the plan that fits your volume and select a payment method.
- Once payment clears, Opposetel confirms that your subscription is active.
Configure your users
- You can set up several distinct users; give each one a username.
- Make sure every user is aware of the applicable terms and conditions.
Submit your calling lists
- You receive a confirmation email when a list is uploaded.
- You download the cleaned files once they have been processed.

Opposetel processes files in the order they arrive. Outside of unusually busy periods, you can expect a cleaned prospecting list back within about 72 working hours.

For consumers

If you live in France and want to stop unsolicited sales calls, you can add your number to Bloctel:

Complete the form on the Bloctel website with your name, email, address, and the numbers you want listed (up to eight). You also create an account during this step.
Validate your request. Bloctel sends a confirmation email within about 48 hours. You have 10 days to click the validation link, otherwise the request expires and you start over.
Bloctel sends a second email with a confirmation number, which gives you access to the account you created in step one. From there you can update your details or report illegal calls.

Your numbers are protected from unsolicited commercial calls within 30 days of validation at the latest. Registration lasts three years, and you can cancel at any time.

What Bloctel does not cover: scams, robocalls, and text messages

Registering on Bloctel does not block every nuisance. It only protects consumers from commercial calls placed by a business. For everything else, here is what to do.

Automated and pre-recorded calls (robocalls)

Automated, pre-recorded calls are legal only when you have given clear, unambiguous consent for your number to be used that way, for example by ticking a box. If you believe your number is being called illegally and you know which company is responsible, you can file a complaint with the CNIL (Commission Nationale de l’Informatique et des Libertés), France’s independent data-protection authority. Companies that break the rules can be fined per illegal call.

Scams

If you are getting calls designed to harvest your personal information for fraud, you can report the caller to the CNIL when you can identify them, and you can also file a criminal complaint with the police or public prosecutor.

Voicemail traps

Bloctel does not block voicemails that try to lure you into calling back a premium-rate number. The safest move is not to call back. Report the offending number by texting it to 33700 (free of charge) with the message SPAM VOCAL 0X XX XX XX XX. You will get a confirmation that your report has been forwarded to the relevant carriers.

Unsolicited SMS or MMS

Bloctel does not cover unwanted text messages either. To stop them:

Reply STOP by SMS to the number that texted you. The company is legally required to confirm your request and remove you from its database. Texting CONTACT to the same number returns the sender’s customer-service details.
Forward the message to 33700 (with no added comment) so carriers can act directly against the sender. The service works across all French operators and is free on most networks. Numbers flagged through 33700 can be reviewed by the DGCCRF (France’s consumer-protection and fraud authority), which can pursue legal action.
You can also report the sender to the CNIL, the police, or the public prosecutor.

Why respecting Bloctel matters

If you are reading this as a business, you might see Bloctel as a constraint on prospecting and growth. It does limit who you can cold call, but that is not a bad thing. Anyone using the phone to reach customers, whether a sales team or a contact center, has an interest in treating the channel with respect. That means applying real targeting, personalization, and judgment instead of dialing through a raw list.

When people feel harassed, they stop answering numbers they don’t recognize, let calls go to voicemail, and file complaints. That damages your standing with carriers and erodes trust in the phone for everyone. Rules like Bloctel, taken seriously, keep the telephone a credible and effective way to reach the public. Ignored, they push the whole channel toward irrelevance.

For teams building compliant outbound and inbound voice flows, this is where good tooling helps. With Callr’s REST API and webhooks, and low-code voice scenarios in Callr Actions, you can route, qualify, and connect calls intelligently, so the conversations that do happen are the ones people actually want.