BT InLink number blacklist stats

02 Jun, 2026 (modified 02 Jun, 2026)

Background

Across the UK, BT has units providing free phone calls, free Wi-Fi and two giant advertising screens called Street Hubs. I previously posted about the older variant of these (from when they were called InLink), but today I’m focusing on the phone call feature.

As you might guess, providing phone calls for free to anyone on the street can lead to abuse. So BT acted and introduced automatic blocking of suspicious numbers.

The blacklist

The Android tablets you use to make calls on these are filled with files called blacklist.json or blacklist-[digits].json files. Unfortunately, the system is so locked down I couldn’t inspect these before and never knew the purpose. :(

But 3 days ago, I got the list! And I believe this is what Street Hubs use to check if they call a number.

Overview

Here’s the list, but without the phone numbers. It would be kind of silly to just drop those:

{
  "name": "Default",
  "black_list": [
    {
      "type": "NumberBlocks",
      "start_time": "00:00",
      "description": "Block specific mobiles on ALL sites",
      "end_time": "23:59",
      "day": "[0-6]",
      "dialog": "CALL BLOCKED: This action was blocked. We restrict certain calls to protect our community if we believe it may be associated with unusual activity. Tell us if you think we made a mistake streethub@bt.com",
      "site_id": ".*",
      "number_patterns": [
        "^(0|\\+44|0044)(a|lot|of|numbers)"
      ]
    },
    {
      "type": "MobileBlocks",
      "start_time": "00:00",
      "description": "Block all mobile calls on SPECIFIC Sites, 24hr",
      "end_time": "23:59",
      "day": "[0-6]",
      "dialog": "Sorry, calls to Mobile phones are restricted from this StreetHub",
      "site_id": "(?i)uk-002385|uk-002387|uk-002412|uk-002445|uk-002404|uk-002489|uk-002473|uk-002480|uk-002511|uk-002499|uk-002495|uk-002501|uk-000013|uk-046904|uk-001130|uk-002518|uk-000025|uk-001134|uk-001202|uk-001511|uk-001335|uk-001310|uk-001391|uk-047647|uk-047083|uk-046849|uk-001361|uk-001512|uk-007601|uk-046868|uk-046882|uk-046883|uk-004529|uk-000050|uk-000053|uk-000037|uk-000042|uk-000039|uk-000058|uk-000038|uk-000049|UK-005915|uk-002383|uk-000014|uk-036778|uk-036775|uk-036912|uk-036774|uk-036871|uk-047519|uk-047515|uk-047523|uk-047526|uk-047518|uk-047521|uk-000034|uk-005242|uk-047570|uk-008551|uk-008549|uk-008696|uk-048391|uk-008703|uk-047869|uk568473|uk-036719|uk-047525|uk-651550|UK–713211|UK-710380|uk-023015|uk-694344|uk-790323|UK-589027|uk-105152|uk-043364|uk043364",
      "number_patterns": [
        "^(0|\\+44|0044)7[1-57-9][0-9]{8}"
      ]
    },
    {
      "type": "MobileAndLandlineBlocks",
      "start_time": "00:00",
      "description": "Block all mobile and landline calls on SPECIFIC Sites, 24hr",
      "end_time": "23:59",
      "day": "[0-6]",
      "dialog": "Sorry, calls to Mobile and Landline phones are restricted from this StreetHub",
      "site_id": "(?i)bb-hudsonyards3|uk-505705|UK253076|UK276002|UK-686750|UK-253076|UK213304",
      "number_patterns": [
        "^(0|\\+44|0044)(1|2|7)[0-9]{8,9}"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "version": "2026-05-30T21:01:02.219215+01:00[Europe/London]"
}

Here we see that the rules system can:

have multiple rules
block numbers by regex
time periods when rules are enforced
the ability to target certain units.

The first rule is what I baited you to this blog post with. In this is a beautiful regex with 13,000+ phone numbers that no Street Hub can call.

The second blocks mobile calls completely for 77 units. I wish I could locate these…

The third rule blocks mobiles and landlines. Only 7 units are under this rule. These areas must have terribly worried councils to have to be blocked, lol.

What provider is blocked the most?

Content warning: bad workflow.

After wasting 3 or so hours to realise a shell loop with grep is not good for thousands of lines, I settled on Python and SQLite to help answer this question. Basically, I use shell tools to transform the text a little, SQLite to store the data, and Python to query and count.

But before I touch either, I need to turn the regex into an actual list of numbers:

$ jq -r '.black_list[0].number_patterns[0][15:]' blacklist.json | tr '|()' '\n  ' > blacklist.txt

Now we need a way to match phone numbers to providers. Ofcom provides numbering data with allocations and even dates.

The numbers in the blacklist start with 1, 2, 3, 7 and 8 so we’ll need the related CSV files. There’s a zip with all of them but I just downloaded them one by one, because, uh… yeah.

The CSV files look like this:

# this is s7.csv
NMS Number Block: Number Block,Block Status,CP Name,Non Geo Number Length,Allocation Date
7000 0,Allocated,Vodafone Limited,10 digit numbers,06/11/1995
7000 1,Allocated,Vodafone Limited,10 digit numbers,06/11/1995

The spacing in the numbers isn’t helpful here, so I used sed to remove it:

# i did this to all of them
$ sed -E 's/^([0-9]+) ([0-9]+)/\1\2/g' s7.csv | head -n5
NMS Number Block: Number Block,Block Status,CP Name,Non Geo Number Length,Allocation Date
70000,Allocated,Vodafone Limited,10 digit numbers,06/11/1995
70001,Allocated,Vodafone Limited,10 digit numbers,06/11/1995

Then I combined all the CSV files I needed into one, so I could import it into SQLite:

# make a header so it's nice to query in SQL
$ echo block,status,cp_name,number_length,alloc_date,notes >> full.csv

# now combine all the others, without their headers
$ tail -q -n+2 s*.csv >> full.csv

# sqlite import
$ sqlite3 numbers.db 
SQLite version 3.47.2 2024-12-07 20:39:59
Enter ".help" for usage hints.
sqlite> .mode csv
sqlite> .import full.csv numbers
sqlite> .exit

Finally, the blacklist of phone numbers has to be turned into prefixes, otherwise the Python script or SQLite script will have to needlessly shorten numbers while running:

$ cut -c1-5 ../blacklist.txt | sort -u > prefixes.txt

The prefix list is also just shorter than the blacklist, at 3,944 lines compared to 13,338.

Then we can use the Python script, which is pretty simple:

import sqlite3
import json

with open("prefixes.txt") as f:
    prefixes = f.read().split("\n")

counts = {}

db = sqlite3.connect("numbers.db")
for p in prefixes:
    cur = db.execute("SELECT numbers.cp_name FROM numbers WHERE numbers.block = ?", (p,))
    res = cur.fetchone() or ("None",)
    if res[0] in counts:
        counts[res[0]] += 1
    else:
        counts[res[0]] = 1

keys_sorted = sorted(counts, key=lambda key: counts[key], reverse=True)
for key in keys_sorted:
    print(f"{counts[key]} {key}")

The script runs in under a minute, about 43 seconds. Here are the results!

1171 Telefonica UK Limited
965 Vodafone Limited
632 EE Limited ( TM)
500 Hutchison 3G UK Ltd
360 None
187 EE Limited (Orange)
81 Lycamobile (UK) Limited
20 Sky UK Limited
17 Virgin Mobile Telecoms Limited
6 Vectone Mobile Limited
2 Gamma Telecom Holdings Limited
2 Sure (Guernsey) Limited
1 Stour Marine Limited
1 JT (Jersey) Limited

“None” here just means nothing came up in the database. IT could very well have an allocation that I somehow missed.

Telefonica UK Limited, or what most people know as O2, is apparently the most blocked!

Matching units to locations

As I said before, 77 units can’t make mobile calls and 7 can’t call landlines either. But we only have IDs like “uk-00248”, “UK-589027” or “uk043364” to work with, and there’s no “Find a Street Hub site”.

But there is a site to find BT Wi-Fi hotspots, which Street Hubs are part of, by location. And that site includes IDs!

Screenshot of the hotspot search showing the Street Hub at 1 Braham Street

Fun fact, the one in the screenshot is inside BT’s London office.

Looking inside the iframe tells us that Geome is the company behind this map. But they don’t seem to have API documentation, so… reading time…

The map starts off by sending a request to https://btwifihotspotlocator.geoapp.me/api/v1/premium_hotspots/within_bounds?sw[]=50.56&sw[]=-15.95&ne[]=59&ne[]=6.95&format=json. The bounds cover the entire UK and Northern Ireland, and this is the response:

[
	{
	  "centroid": [
	    50.812455,
	    -0.421382
	  ],
	  "bounds": {
	    "sw": [
	      50.784411,
	      -1.184071
	    ],
	    "ne": [
	      50.852806,
	      -0.117547
	    ]
	  },
	  "size": 34,
	  "id": "50_812455--0_421382"
	},
	[...]
]

You get an array full of these “centroid” things, which are the bubbles that group together locations in the map UI.

When you click on one, the bounds of the centroid are used to narrow down the area. So the sw[] and ne[] parts of the URL get replaced. After that, you start getting real results:

[
	{
		"id": 34617338,
		"lat": 51.865379,
		"lng": -2.241184,
		"name": "Streethub Station Road UK211095",
		"address": "Station Road",
		"city": "Gloucester",
		"postcode": "GL1 1SZ",
		"estate_id": 447,
		"estate_name": "BT STREET HUB",
		"estate_filterable": true,
		"type": null,
		"estate_logo_url": "https://analytics.btwifi.com/rails/active_storage/blobs/redirect/eyJfcmFpbHMiOnsiZGF0YSI6OTg4LCJwdXIiOiJibG9iX2lkIn19--487e79d1a25c349ed5c4001587b752ceb57f3586/BT.PNG"
	}
]

estate_id is important here. When set to filter for Street Hubs only, the UI adds &estate_id=447 to its requests.

With that in mind, I made another script to collect all hotspots that are Street Hubs.

What units can’t make mobile calls?

name	address	city	postcode	coords
Streethub Northolt Rd UK 023015S	248D Northolt Rd	Harrow	HA2 8DU	51.564751, -0.35363
Streethub High Street UK 043364S	150 (O/S Vodaphone) High Street	Ealing	W3 6RF	51.507279, -0.270475
Streethub 4 Bridge St Peterborough UK105152	SHUB OPP Middletons 4 Bridge St	Peterborough	PE1 1HJ	52.571827, -0.241964
Streethub Bradford Mall UK568473	Pavement o/s Heron Foods- Bradford Mall Saddlers Shopping Centre	Walsall	WS1 1YT	52.583938, -1.983914
Streethub Grove Green Road UK 589027	Grove Green Road	London	E11 1SL	51.568696, 0.006854
Streethub Bridge Street Peterborough UK651550S	SHUB OS Dominoa??s Pizza 94 Bridge St	Peterborough	PE1 1DY	52.569413, -0.24218
Streethub Footpath along Railway Rd Ewood Blackburn UK 694344	Footpath along Railway Rd	Blackburn	BB1 5AX	53.748097, -2.480457
Streethub Yorkshire Street Rochdale UK710380	SHUB Pavement opposite Santander 63 to 65 Yorkshire Street	Rochdale	OL16 1BZ	53.618633, -2.157001
Streethub Baillie Street Rochdale UK713211	SHUB Pavement o/s former Wheatshead Shopping Centre Baillie Street	Rochdale	OL16 1JZ	53.618482, -2.15564
Streethub High Street Watford UK790323	High Street	Watford	WD17 1LN	51.658409, -0.399942

What units can’t make mobile or landline calls?

name	address	city	postcode	coords
Streethub Midsummer Boulevard Milton Keynes UK213304	SHUB Pavement outside 150 Midsummer Boulevard	Milton Keynes	MK9 3BA	52.044045, -0.753013
Streethub Linthorpe Rd Middlesbrough UK253076	Linthorpe Rd	Middlesbrough	TS1 5AD	54.576165, -1.237464
Streethub Outside Holiday Express Albert Rd Middlesbrough UK 276002	Outside Holiday Express Albert Rd	Middlesbrough	TS1 2PA	54.575543, -1.235108
Streethub Queens Drive UK 505705	Queens Drive	Ealing	W5 3HU	51.516855, -0.290709
Streethub Station Road Bexley UK686750S	SHUB Footpath outside The Hair Movement Salon Station Road	Sidcup	DA15 7AE	51.433702, 0.103094