We moved from Talk Talk to Virgin a few months ago and a result ending up changing our number around 3 times. As soon as we changed to our last number we have been receiving calls mostly during the night, really annoyingly around 3-4am in the morning - sometimes 2 or 3 times in the same night. Each time it's the same deal, it's not a person on the end of the line but it's some kind of atmospheric crackling for a period of time then it hangs up. Almost like some kind of faxback system but it's not a fax machine on the other end - this noise gets broadcasted through the whole house through the answering machine. Because my husband is self employed we can't unplug the phone and we're reluctant to keep changing our number, we'd rather get to the bottom of it. Each time the number is displayed and each time is a local number but always different. We used to try and call the number back but would always receive a message that the number did not exist or would just give an engaged tone. This stopped for a period of time but has just started again around a week ago. The last few times however when we call back we get through to a person and always someone different - again on different numbers. We have now had the same conversion/ argument with enough people to be convinced that they knew nothing about these calls but have found out something rather strange that they all seem to be SKY customers. Has anyone experienced anything like this as it's driving us nuts! We've tried all the usual channels to try and stop these calls but because each one is a different number we've hit roadblocks each time. Does anyone have any advice?

It could be someone making prank calls over VoIP and spoofing the number.

However it might be that people have faulty Sky boxes and it's dialling the wrong number.

Or people locally with Sky boxes have entered a prefix in the Sky box set-up and the prefix is incorrect, and just happens the with the digits in the prefix and the number the Sky box tries to dial, matches your number.

Was there a reason why you changed phone numbers when switching from TalkTalk and moving to Virgin and not porting the number over. (I take it you mean you have moved to Virgin's cable network).

Thanks for the reply.

the reason we didn't port our number over from talk talk is because they wouldn't let us. If you are moving from talk talk we were told the only way to take the number is to move back to BT for a period of time then move to cable.
I guess that's a big factor in BT clamping down on minimum contract periods for 12 months - originally you used to go for BT for 3 months then transfer over and take your number with you.
We didn't go for that route - we just went straight to cable and had to take the hit on a new number.
Just as well as we're now trying to go back to BT and because we were with Talk Talk until last year, they're charging us £125 for going back even though our BT line is working fine, they need to send an engineer out.

It's likely that your BT line isn't "working fine "- because it's still connected to Talk Talk's equipment at the exchange - hence an engineer is needed to disconnect it from there and reconnect it to BT's equipment.

Did you try to get the current £29.99 connection deal rather than paying £124.99?