Ofcom (UK)

Ofcom is the regulator for phone, internet, and broadcast in the United Kingdom. For an outbound dialer the part that matters most is its rules on abandoned and silent calls — the calls a predictive dialer makes when no agent is free to take the connection. Ofcom treats persistent silent calls as a serious nuisance to the public and has the power to fine companies that generate too many of them. If you dial UK numbers from a VICIdial campaign, these rules are aimed squarely at you.

The headline figure is the abandonment limit, which caps the share of live answers your campaign is allowed to drop. When VICIdial connects a call but has no agent ready, that connection counts toward your abandonment rate. You stay under the cap by keeping predictive dialing pacing conservative so the dialer does not connect more people than your agents can pick up, and when a drop does happen, by playing a compliant safe harbor message — a short recording that identifies you and gives a way to opt out — instead of leaving the person with dead air.

Caller ID and nuisance rules

Ofcom also expects you to present a valid, dialable caller number so the person you reached can call you back — anything resembling caller id spoofing invites a nuisance call complaint, and complaints are how Ofcom finds the dialers to investigate. The thinking lines up with Canada's crtc and the broader U.S. framework, but the exact abandoned-call percentage, the repeat-call rules, and the message requirements are UK-specific, so set them per campaign rather than reusing settings from another market. The practical build is a separate UK campaign with its own pacing ceiling, its own call-times window, and an owned caller ID. Ofcom also expects you to keep records that show your abandoned-call rate stayed within limits, so leave reporting on and retain it. This describes the operational picture, not formal legal advice.