Communications in the southern state of Tamil Nadu were affected by the agitation as workers did not attend to repairs.
Companies with offices in the southern state such as TVS-Suzuki Ltd, India's third-largest maker of motorcycles and scooters, and Satyam Infoway Ltd, the country's No. 2 Internet service provider, reported problems.
TVS-Suzuki officials said they were not able to call their factory at Hosur, 300 kilometers away from the corporate headquarters at Chennai, the state's capital. The company said it was using e-mail to communicate with the factory.
All phones in the township of Ghaziabad, 20 kilometers from the capital city of Delhi were out of order, The Times of India newspaper reported.
The agitation is also hurting mobile service providers as calls made between mobile phones and fixed-line sets are routed through the government's network, a statement by the Cellular Operators' Association of India said.
There is concern that if the strike continues, it could disrupt delivery schedules of companies, hurting sales and profit and slowing the economy, analysts and economists said.
More talks
Government officials, including the Minister for Communications Ram Vilas Paswan, have been negotiating with the unions since last week in a bid to end the strike that began Wednesday.
The government has persuaded one union to resume work. The Bharatiya Telecom Employees Union, the smallest of the three unions that had gone on strike, is affiliated with the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party. It represents about 25,000 workers.
However, the two largest unions are still protesting the government's plan to turn the country's telecommunications department into a company without offering adequate assurances that jobs and benefits such as pensions will be protected.
"The government made an appeal to us yesterday to end the strike," said Thomas John K, president of the Federation of National Telecom Organisations, one of the two unions still on strike. "But there is little chance of that since most key ministers are out of the country."
Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha left for a 10-day visit to the US yesterday. The unions haven't so far received any invitation for talks with the government today, said Thomas John.
Optimism
Still, there is hope the strike may end soon as the government is likely to address the concerns of the striking employees, an economist said.
"I don't expect the strike to continue since the minister is in a mood to grant all their demands no matter what it costs the government," said DH Pai Panandikar, director-general of the RPG Foundation, a New Delhi based think-tank.
The telecom workers service some 20 million lines across the country, except in the two cities of Mumbai and Delhi. The two unions on strike represent about 80 percent of the department's 400,000 workers.
India plans to convert the department into a company called Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd from October 1. The move is meant to make the department more efficient as the government ends its monopoly over telecom services in line with global trends. Bharat Sanchar will have an equity capital of 50 billion rupees (US$1.1 billion).
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