Bouygues Telecom turns on network-level branded calling in France

Hiya announces that Bouygues Telecom has deployed Branded Call across its network, making it the first French mobile operator to offer business caller identity to all subscribers at the network level. The service launches in June 2026, with Hiya’s AI platform integrated directly into Bouygues Telecom’s Ericsson-powered core, “verifying and displaying a business caller’s identity before the phone rings. No app is needed, no customer data leaves the network, and the service works regardless of phone model or whether the number is saved in the subscriber’s contacts.”

The framing matters. There are two flavors of branded calling shipping today: the OS/app-overlay path that lives on the handset (Apple Business Connect, Google’s Verified Calls, third-party dialer apps) and the in-network path that runs as part of the carrier’s call setup. The overlay path negotiates with whatever phone the customer happens to be holding; the in-network path reaches every subscriber on the operator, period. Bouygues going in-network — and Hiya pitching that as “France’s first” — is the deployment pattern operators in markets with serious nuisance-call problems are likely to converge on. Hiya cites its State of the Call 2026 finding that 74% of French consumers get six or more unwanted calls a week — the second-highest rate in Europe — as the why-now.

Bouygues Telecom’s Chrystel Abadie Truchet calls Hiya “a partner’s global roadmap, already deployed in over 40 countries and with nearly 20 operators, half of which are European.” That’s the second story here: branded calling has quietly become a thing operators buy as a network feature from a small set of vendors with cross-border deals, and the choice of vendor at network onboarding has long compounding effects. Updates planned for 2027 include displaying the reason for the call and the business’s logo alongside its name — both of which start to look a lot like the visual contract a customer has with an authenticated brand in any other channel.