Mobile phone operator Cellnet has barred calls to India and Pakistan while it investigates a fraud which came to light when large numbers of illegal free calls to those countries were discovered.

Ban will affect every Cellnet customer

The company - the second largest of its type in Britain - believes those responsible have used computers to interfere with the mechanical equipment in the telephone network.

But the Confederation of Indian Organisations, which represents 200,000 UK South Asians, believes the fraud is a symptom of the frustration felt by many Asians who run up high phone bills calling relatives abroad.

Tara Mukherjee, president of the CIO, said: "There is enormous temptation there because of the discrepancy in pricing which discriminates against Asians.

"It is cheap to telephone America and Australia, but not so India or Pakistan. We are an exploited market.

"The COI doesn't in any way condone what has gone on but it tells us that what we should be doing is putting pressure on the telephone companies to lower their charges."

Fraud investigation

A spokesman for BT Cellnet, which operates a standard outside-Europe charge of £1.99 per minute, said charges were partly determined by the telephone companies in the countries concerned.

He said: "Our prices reflect the charges made on us by the networks in other countries.

"If there are genuine customers that are regularly making mobile calls to these destinations, then it would be cheaper for them to use fixed lines.

"The important thing to remember is that this fraud could have happened in any country."

Previous frauds

The company said its calls ban would be in place for two or three days, or until it had whatever information needed to catch the perpetrators.

The spokesman added: "We are in the process of identifying what the fraud is and where it is coming from. People are making calls and not paying for them.

"This is not the first time a company has imposed such a ban. Certainly they were more common in the early days of the analogue network.

"It is too early to put a figure on the fraud or how many people the ban will directly affect."