CONCORD, N.H. (AP) – Verizon has been ordered to credit about $23.3 million of yellow page publishing profits to telephone customers in New Hampshire, helping to insure that residents’ phone rates will not increase for now, the state Office of Consumer Advocate said.

“It changes the way the company reports its performance to regulators,” state Consumer Advocate Anne Ross said Thursday. “It will show the company making more profits than they’ve been claiming. In the future, it may resolve in lower rates,” she said.

The New Hampshire Public Utilities Commission issued an order on July 9 requiring Verizon to make the adjustment, retroactive to 1999. The company also was fined $1,000.

Ross said Verizon stopped crediting the profit in 1999. The commission didn’t recognize the change until a couple of years later.

“For a number of reasons it didn’t get picked up,” she said.

Verizon has 30 days to ask for reconsideration of the offer, the first step in an appeal to the state Supreme Court.

A lawyer for Verizon did not immediately return a phone message seeking comment Thursday afternoon.