At issue in California was what to do when phone customers with unpublished numbers did not tell the telephone company of their preference.

It also has about 3 million local phone customers.

And some consumer groups argue that a change would mean higher rates for regular phone customers.

The number of residential phone customers dipped below 11,000, compared with 12,000 last year.

However, India is the second largest telecommunications market and has 929.37 million mobile phone customers.

Cable operators have so far signed up about three million phone customers.

Three regional telephone companies are said to be planning a video programming service for phone customers.

This network is currently not used by their mobile phone customers.

But the number of mobile phone customers grew more rapidly, to 424,000, up 50 percent from last year's period.

The company now has 1.3 million phone customers and expects that it will lose another 175,000 by the end of the year.