Phone wars have broken out in Bradford, with BT gunning directly at locally-based rival Telewest.

In a startling broadside, the communications giant has taken out newspaper ads accusing Telewest of hiking prices by as much as 20 per cent.

BT says its charges are now up to 20 times cheaper than the cable firms which have traditionally undercut it.

At the centre of the row is a 6p-per-call "connection charge" in Telewest's small print, on top of its normal call charges.

"It means customers switching to us from Telewest will save every time they pick up the phone," said a BT spokesman.

The company's offensive comes as it unveils a "radical" new pricing structure in which customers on its BT Together package pay a flat rate of 6p for up to an hour on evening and weekend calls - the price Telewest charges just to connect.

BT, whose ads are headlined, "An urgent message to all Telewest customers", said: "Claims by competitors of savings over BT are just plain misleading."

Telewest, which employs 350 people at its national finance centre in Bradford's Mayfair Business Park, off Sticker Lane, accused its rival of attempting to follow its own lead.

Spokesman John Moorwood insisted BT's comparisons applied only to "a few people who make calls with no particular pattern".

The company's managing director Gavin Patterson said: "This is yet another example of BT waking from its cosy slumber, but they are hardly ringing the changes with their announcement."

Telewest is Britain's second biggest cable company, but it has huge debts and has been forced to cut 1,450 jobs across the country in recent years. Last month it announced an overall loss of £2.2 billion, including a write-off on assets whose values had fallen.

Chairman Charles Burdick said then that "several hundred" more jobs would have to go, although most cuts would be achieved through natural wastage.