Fears that the millennium bug will disrupt telephone services over the new year have resulted in a worldwide shortage of satellite phones.

Big banks and other multinational organisations have snapped up supplies in a bid to prevent their executives from being cut off at the vital moment.

The phones, about the size of a laptop personal computer and capable of being packed into a briefcase, are more usually popular with the armed forces, journalists and explorers.

They send and receive signals from geostationary satellites thousands of kilometres above the Earth's surface.

At £2,000 sterling (€3,190) a set they are expensive, but can be relied on when other means of communication are unavailable.

Over the past six months, however, banks, airlines and utilities, among others, have been ordering the phones by the hundred.

Mr Andrew Marriott, national sales manager for Cell Hire, an international service provider with offices in the US and Europe, said: "I have never, ever run out of a satellite phone before. The manufacturers cannot keep up with demand."