A silent call is a telephone call in which the calling party does not speak when the call is answered.
Most such calls are generated by a cold call telemarketing operation's dialer software, which makes many calls automatically and sometimes does not have an agent immediately available to handle an answered call.
As a result, the called party hears silence ("dead air"), followed by the call being disconnected.
[1] This differs from a ghost call, which is not dialed intentionally, and is due to technical issues or pocket dialing.
[citation needed] In the U.S., the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) uses the term "abandoned call" instead of silent call in its regulations applying to telemarketing.