People stand in front of and take pictures of a billboard by Revlon that takes their pictures and displays them on the billboard in Times Square in the Manhattan borough of New York October 13, 2015. The billboard was switched back on today after being off due to the police chief of New York Bill Bratton, requesting a hiatus because as people pose they have been getting groped, according to local media. REUTERS/Carlo Allegri 

A manual telephone switch box used by Soviet army soldiers for their last communication to their Moscow army headquarters in 1994 is pictured in Wuensdorf, south of Berlin, August 30, 2014. Twenty years ago the last Soviet soldier left Germany after one of the biggest peacetime military manoeuvres in history, a triumph of organisation that ended the Soviet's almost 50-year Cold War presence in the former East Germany. Picture taken August 30, 2014. REUTERS/Fabrizio Bensch (GERMANY - Tags: MILITARY ANNIVERSARY CONFLICT POLITICS) 

An Android smartphone displays the Google website in this picture illustration in Seoul September 7, 2011. Antitrust officials in South Korea raided Google Inc's Seoul offices on Tuesday, according to a source familiar with the matter, expanding worldwide regulatory pressure on the Internet giant. In April, South Korea's top Internet portals filed a complaint with antitrust regulators alleging that Google was unfairly stifling competition in the mobile search market. In their joint complaint, NHN Corp and Daum Communications Corp said Android smartphones have Google's search engine installed as a default navigation tool and are "systematically designed" to make it virtually impossible to switch to another option. REUTERS/Truth Leem (SOUTH KOREA - Tags: BUSINESS) 

Workers with CenturyLink telephone company work on building a three-foot wall of sandbags surrounding a switching station during the mandatory evacuation of Craig, Missouri. June 21, 2011. Some 300 residents of a northwest Missouri town were ordered to evacuate, because of two breaches in Missouri River levees and expectations that water will top secondary barriers, officials said on Tuesday. REUTERS/Dave Kaup (UNITED STATES - Tags: ENVIRONMENT BUSINESS) 

An employee of the state-run telephone company checks phone lines in downtown Havana June 12, 2008. Cuba will begin paying its public employees based on productivity and good service, official newspaper Granma said on Wednesday, in another economic reform under President Raul Castro.
REUTERS/Stringer (CUBA) 

Iraqi technicians test the telephone switches at the Mamoun communication tower in Baghdad on February 26, 2004. Work was completed on Thursday on rebuilding some dozen telephone exchanges in the Iraqi capital Baghdad, destroyed by U.S. bombardment last year. REUTERS/Faleh Kheiber REUTERS OP/ 

An abandoned telephone switch post lies next to an abandoned sidewalk
near the area formerly known as the Love Canal, in Niagara Falls, New
York, July 18, 2003. Twenty five years ago, Love Canal was America's
most notorious toxic dump, where leaking poisons from waste dumped by
the Hooker Chemical Company (now Occidental Chemical) forced thousands
to flee their homes and awoke the nation to the dangers of pollution.
The U.S. government eventually declared emergency evacuations of the
area in 1978 and 1980, and relocated more than 800 families and
reimbursed them for their homes which were destroyed. Picture taken
July 18, 2003. REUTERS/Mike Segar/FEATURE/ENVIRONMENT-LOVECANAL

MS/HB 

A man uses a mobile phone at a telecommunications showroom in Hong Kong March 1. A local phone company billed March 1 to be "The Independence Day" for mobile phone users on the introduction of mobile phone portability for subscribers to switch between operators without changing phone numbers. Gimmicks are being used to attract customers as Hong Kong telecommunications operators are facing a difficult year of stiff price competition in 1999.

BY/JIR/CLH/ 

A telephone salesman snoozes at his counter, surrounded by stock, during a quiet period of trading February 12. Most businesses in the national capital are on official holidays during the annual spring festival celebrations which started when the Chinese Lunar New Year began last week. China will sign up 15 million new telephone subscribers by the end of this year when China's telephone availability rate will reach 7.4 percent. The country's telephone switching capacity will increase by 17 million lines and four million new mobile telephone clients will be added. Chinese companies face strong competition from foreign companies eager to cash in on the telecommunications boom.