There is no way of deactivating the Voicemail element of 1572 Call Protect. Despite the BT babble, it's not a call blocking service at all; in fact, Openreach internally refer to it as Choose to Divert (my emphasis) - a far more accurate name. Choose to Refuse (which doesn't need to be managed online, unlike Call Protect) is far more effective because it really does block calls at the exchange so that they are not connected, but unfortunately is limited to 10 numbers. BT could expand this to a capacity of 100 numbers (as TalkTalk have done with their own version of Choose to Refuse), but they clearly have no interest in expanding the service and want to wind it down. Anonymous Call Reject is another damn good feature, but it seems that will also be replaced by the wholly inadequate Call Protect.
To be honest, the only real difference between 1571 and 1572 is that the former notifies you of messages awaiting your listening pleasure, while the latter does not - so you have to keep dialling 1572 to check if there are any messages that just might be important. This is a real pain! Ringing and caller display are also somehow bypassed with Call Protect, which I suppose is how BT get away with pretending that it's a call blocking service/feature, when it's really just a glorified answering machine. It's all a big con, no wonder it's free. Of course, BT need to connect calls to make money, so why would they want to expand Choose to Refuse and continue offering that and Anonymous Call Reject?
