The company said the number of access lines in service was up 5 percent from a year earlier.

The lowering of the whole station area and the access lines required careful planning.

With the Bells controlling 90 percent of the local access lines, he said, "it's not hard to understand why."

Pacific Bell now offers its customers 17.7 million access lines.

The company's local access lines declined by 1.7 percent in 2002.

The company added 90,000 new access lines, bring its total to 12.2 million.

The company has approximately 375,000 access lines, $580 million in annual revenues and 2,000 employees.

Businesses would have to pay the surcharge on up to 75 of their access lines.

The number of access lines rose 2.9 percent, to 513,000, in the the last year.

"When it comes to installing a million access lines in record time, no one can beat us."