BT has admitted that someone has gained "illicit access" to its network after half the homes in Norfolk village Thurne were billed for calls made to premium-rate XXX phone numbers.

The cluster of calls - which wildly inflated bills of those hit - happened in the middle of the night during early May.

At first, BT didn't believe punters when they insisted that they had not made the calls, the Eastern Daily Press reports. Instead, it told worried customers that the calls must have been made from within their homes.

After it became apparent that this was not a one-off and that a cluster of homes had been hit in the village, BT began to look at the matter more closely.

In a statement, the monster telco told us: "An investigation by BT Security has shown that a number of customers in the East Anglia area have been affected by illicit access to the BT network.

"This has resulted in some customers receiving bills with unrecognised calls listed. The investigation has shown that the calls in question were not made from within customers' homes and we are in the process of refunding the customers that have been affected.

"BT Security is vigorously investigating this situation in order to identify the perpetrators and will take appropriate action once this has been done."

Although the company is reluctant to disclose too many details about the incident, it has ruled out any notion that this was an "inside job". ®

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