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Phone Directory New Zealand |
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In telephony, a telephone directory
(also called a telephone book and phonebook) is a listing of
telephone subscribers in a geographical area or subscribers to
services provided by the organisation that publishes the
directory.
Content
Subscriber names are generally listed in alphabetical order,
together with their postal or street address and telephone
number. Every subscriber in the geographical coverage area is
usually listed, but some subscribers can request the exclusion
of their number from the directory. Their number is then said to
be "unlisted" (American English), "ex-directory" (British
English) or "private" (Australia and New Zealand).
In the case of unlisted numbers, practices as to Caller-ID vary
by jurisdiction. Sometimes, the Caller-ID on outbound calls is
blank; in other jurisdictions, unlisted numbers still show
unless the caller dials a blocking code; in still others, the
customer must pay a fee for automatic blocking.
Under current rules and practices, cell phone and Voice over IP
listings are not included in telephone directories. Efforts to
create cellular directories have met stiff opposition from
several fronts, including a significant percentage of
subscribers who seek to avoid telemarketers.
In 1991, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled (in Feist v. Rural) that
telephone companies do not have a copyright on telephone
listings, because copyright protects creativity and not the mere
labor of collecting existing information. Within the
geographical reach of the Court, the Feist ruling has resulted
in the availability of many innovative telephone directory
services on CD-ROM and the World Wide Web.
Publication
Telephone directories can be published in hard copy or in
electronic form. In the latter case, the directory can be
provided as an online service through proprietary terminals or
over the Internet, or on physical media like CD-ROM.
In France, the Minitel videotex system originated as an attempt
by France Télécom to rid itself of its paper publishing costs by
forcing all telephone users to use Minitel terminals instead.
In Switzerland, a few payphones are now accompanied with
electronic telephone directory terminals instead of paper
directories, and phone users are charged for each search.
Types
A telephone directory may also be called a phone book or may be
known by the colour of the paper it is printed on.
White pages generally indicates personal or alphabetic listings.
Yellow pages, sometimes called the A2Z, generally indicates a
business directory classified by business type or services
provided, almost always with paid advertising.
Black pages, sometimes called a "reverse telephone directory".
Other colours may have other meanings, depending on a country's
customs. Information on government agencies is often printed on
blue or green pages.
Ancillary content
A telephone directory may also provide instructions about how to
use the telephone service in the local area, may give important
numbers for emergency services, utilities, hospitals, doctors,
and organisations who can provide support in times of personal
crisis. It may also have civil defence or emergency management
information. There may be transit maps, postal code guides, or
stadium seating charts, as well as advertising.
History
The first telephone directory, consisting of a single page, was
issued on February 21, 1878. It covered 50 subscribers in New
Haven, Connecticut. The Reuben H. Donnelly company asserts that
it published the first classified directory, or yellow pages,
for Chicago, Illinois, in 1886. The first British telephone
directory was published in 1880.
Reverse directories
A reverse telephone directory, reverse directory, or criss-cross
directory, is a telephone directory in which the entries are in
order by address (first by city, then by street, then by house
number), and were used to find out the name of a subscriber with
a particular address or to find the neighbors of a particular
address. They were fairly common until the 1960s as a separately
published book, or sometimes included at the back of the regular
telephone directory with each section on a different colour
paper. Printed reverse directories have become less common with
the availability of telephone databases on CD-ROM and on the
Internet with advanced searching features.
They are not well known to the general public since they have
generally been available on a limited basis to telephone
companies or government officials, although genealogists and
private investigators know which public libraries have them in
their collection. In addition, some telephone companies have
made the information generally available through little known
services, such as the "2080 service" in Chicago (now
discontinued), where a call to the exchange and the number 2080
produced an operator who would give the name and address of any
other number in that exchange. But such services remain online.
Instead of looking up a number, a call to directory assistance
(4-1-1 in the NANP) will give the same results if a book is not
available. However, there is usually a significant charge for
this.
In the United Kingdom, Ireland and many other countries it is
illegal to perform a reverse lookup from a phone number,
although some companies have attempted to sell reverse
directories. CD-ROM telephone directories supplied by telephone
operators are now sold in an encrypted format that allows only
lookups from a name and address.
In Jersey, the local paper phone book has a form of reverse
directory with the phone number and then the name and address,
for example:
712345 – Mr A Smith, 1 Any Street, St, Helier
712346 – Mrs B Johnson, 2 Any Street, St Helier
It exists after the regular directory in the phone book. |
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