Comcast telephone customers aren’t in the latest Nashua area phone book from FairPoint because the cable firm didn’t want them there, FairPoint says.

“Comcast approached us in the spring of last year,” Jeff Nevins, FairPoint Communications spokesman, said in response to queries from The Telegraph.

“They instructed us to not include their listings in their book. … We removed the listings from the database in the third quarter of last year.

“We did not make the decision; this was a decision that was made by Comcast.

“To my knowledge, they have not come back and tried to sell us the numbers subsequent to us taking them out. Nor have they come back and asked us to put them back in for free. They made the decision not to participate. … If they want to come back and give us the list, they could go back in the book.”

Comcast provided its numbers for free to established phone-book publishers through 2011 and now charges for them, the company said.

The question arose after the 2013 Nashua area directory arrived this week with almost 60 percent fewer residential white-page listings than in 2012. Upon questioning by The Telegraph, it was discovered that no area residents who get their phone service through Comcast’s Xfinity service were included.

“I noticed it last week when I got it at the door,” said David Fredette, the Nashua city treasurer. “I was upset. … I believe my name has been in there since I first had my own phone in 1979. I get a lot of calls at home from people who look it up. I tell people, ‘I’m the only David Fredette in the book; look me up!’ I guess I won’t say that anymore.”

Amanda Noon, director of consumer affairs for the New Hampshire Public Utilities Commission, said Friday that FairPoint, the local regulated phone company, is required to allow other providers to list their phone numbers, “but they’re not required to go get them or purchase them.”

Rules about phone directories are being revised as a result of Senate Bill 48, passed last summer, which removed part of the state’s regulatory oversight of FairPoint.

FairPoint’s Nashua 2013 Yellow Pages – paid business advertisements that have long been a lucrative source of income – are smaller than last year, but only by about 21 percent: 337 pages compared with 424 last year.

The 2013 FairPoint business listings, simple phone listings like white pages for companies, are virtually unchanged: 37 pages compared to last year’s 38.

The residential white-pages listing in the 2013-14 Nashua phone book from FairPoint is less than half the size of the 2012-13 book: 60 pages compared with 130 pages last year, with the same number of listings, about 480, per page.

“There were more than 240,000 numbers removed across three states,” Nevins said of his company’s Northern New England footprint.

Providing comprehensive telephone books to all customers was once part of the requirement for being a phone company, but cellphones, Internet calls and alternative carriers have undermined the switched network phone system.

In many parts of the country, the regulated phone company doesn’t print white pages at all, or only delivers them if requested.

At the same time, competition has cropped up from other companies.

FairPoint has been New Hampshire’s regulated telephone company since it bought Verizon’s landlines in northern New England in 2008, but the industry is changing fast. These days, FairPoint’s business depends on selling high-speed Internet service and providing so-called “backhaul” service that connects cellphone towers to the phone network about as much as it depends on income from traditional phone service by what is known as the switched network.

The number of cellphones has surpassed landlines in most areas, and it appears that a majority of landline phones in the Nashua area are provided by Comcast rather than FairPoint.

Neither cellphone nor Internet numbers are published in any printed directory, nor are they easily obtained online.

David Brooks can be reached at 594-6531 or dbrooks@nashua telegraph.com. Also, follow Brooks on Twitter (@Telegraph_DaveB).