According to a report by the Vanuatuan online news service, Port Villa Press, Aruna Amarasekara, director-general of the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission of Sri Lanka, has stated that the block would be in force for three months.

Sri Lanka Telecom has instructed ISPs and service providers to block calls to 13 countries including the Cook Islands, Kiribati, Nauru, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Tokelau, Tuvalu, Vanuatu, the Wallis and Futuna islands and Western Samoa.

In the meantime, callers to these territories from Sri Lanka will have to make operator-assisted calls.

"We have decided to do this because of modem hijacking," Amarasekara was quoted as explaining.

Modem hijacking occurs when a fraudulent website surreptitiously installs software on a user's PC which changes the computer's dial-up settings to call long distance, international or premium rate numbers without the user's knowledge. They are frequently connected to pornographic websites and the Sri Lankan telecommunications authorities have found that many of these calls terminate in the South Pacific region.

It is not the first time that a country has blocked direct international calls to the South Pacific. In September 2004, two of Ireland's leading telecommunications providers blocked direct-dial calls to the area after a rise in modem hijacking.