It is hard to think of telephones without their crucial ancillary - the telephone directory. They have existed almost as long as telephones themselves, but with the rise of the Internet and smartphones, their days may well be numbered.
Telephone directories have been in existence almost as long as the telephone itself. The first telephone directory was published in 1878 in the United States. It was quickly apparent that telephones had to have a directory service associated with them.
At first the only directories were what we commonly call the White Pages directory which featured residential listings, but it was not long before companies discovered the value of being listed and the classic Yellow Pages service was born.
The original white pages were simply seen as a free ancillary service to drive use of the telephone itself and that model has been perpetuated ever since. The majority of phone companies publish some form of white pages directory for their local area. In fact it is one of the biggest publishing exercises in the world.
From consumer telephone directories was then born a plethora of other directories
:Residential listings - White pages
Business directory - Yellow pages
Reverse telephone directory - Grey pages (phone numbers are listed first instead of alphabetical last name listings as in the white pages)
Government agencies - Blue or Green pages
For the UK White Pages, the provision of residential listings is changing as the monopoly supplier BT loses its grip on the market and the emergence of mobile phones with increasing numbers of individuals not bothering with a landline at all.
Thursday, 29 October 2009 15:41 | 
Author: Mark | 
