COLUMBIA - Residents in some S.C. cities will have to wait until next year before they can take advantage of new federal rules that let people transfer their home phone numbers to cell phones.

The new rules take effect Monday for cell phone customers in and around Columbia, Charleston, the urban Upstate and suburbs of Charlotte.

But people who live near those areas and get their local phone service from small companies with mostly rural customers will have to wait six months under an exemption approved last week by the state's utility regulators.

Twenty-seven local phone-service providers requested the waiver, saying the Federal Communication Commission rules need more review.

The providers also said implementing the rules would require costly upgrades.

"The commission, based on evidence, believed it was the correct thing to do," said Bruce Duke, acting executive director of the Public Service Commission. "They just weren't ready to go ahead with this. Most of them were rural, and that's part of the reason why we granted the exemption."

Comporium Communications, the phone company serving roughly 57,000 land-line customers in Rock Hill, Fort Mill, York and the surrounding area, received an exemption, said Glenn McFadden, the company's senior vice president of operations.

"They have granted a stay," he said. "We will be prepared to do this in May."

The new FCC rules become effective in March for most rural customers. Only rural customers who live close enough to cities considered among the nation's 100 largest markets would have been able to take advantage of the rules this month.

The U.S. Telecom Association, which represents local phone companies, has said the new rules will allow wireless companies to take away their customers while limiting their ability to do the same to cell phone users.

The commission should not have granted a waiver based only on a petition by a group of local providers, said consumer advocate Elliott Elam.

Elam wants the PSC to hold a hearing for public comment, which he said should have been done before the commission made its decision.

Duke said no hearing is planned.

"We think those companies may have the right to say this thing was kind of thrown on us at the last minute, and we need more time," Elam said. "But if the PSC has in essence on the face of one document from these telephone companies said, `Well you don't have to do anything,' that's probably going too far."

Musician Christine Poulson doesn't plan to change her home phone number to her cell phone any time soon, but she's upset that she must wait.

Poulson, 43, lives in the Lowcountry town of Bluffton and gets local service from one of the companies on the list.

Poulson says she considered switching to cell phone service, since it would be much more convenient to keep the same number because it's the one most people know.