Ireland’s telecom regulator earlier this week ordered ISPs and te...

many complaints about rogue autodialer programs and modem hijacking that change Internet dialup settings to international numbers. In extreme cases, a spokesman said, small businesses were hit with phone bills of 10,000 and 18,000 euro. The blocking begins Oct. 4. ISPs have also been directed to alert users to the problem of autodialers, ComReg said. Most of the countries are in the South Pacific. ComReg may be the first national regulatory authority to take such an action, the spokesman told us, though several Canadian telcos and British Telecom have voluntarily decided to block some premium rate numbers. The regime -- which will run 6 months -- is “exceptional and unusual,” the spokesman said, but given the scale of the problem, and the failure of a public awareness campaign to stop the scams, it’s necessary. The blocking doesn’t mean the “Cook Islands [a country targeted] will be cut off from Ireland,” he said. ComReg will now create a “white list” of legitimate numbers that, once confirmed, will be able to be called, the spokesman said. ComReg has received more than 350 complaints this year, he said, and its action was prompted by both public and political concerns. In addition to the Cook Islands, the countries involved are Norfolk Island, Sao Tome and Principe, Tokelau, Diego Garcia, Wallis and Futuna, Nauru, Tuvalu, Comoros, Kiribati, Solomon Islands, Mauritania, and French Polynesia.