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From: CAPEK%YKTVMT.BITNET@cunyvm.cuny.edu (Peter G. Capek)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Directory Assistance on CD-ROM
Message-ID: <13961@accuvax.nwu.edu>
Date: 23 Oct 90 05:02:11 GMT
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X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 10, Issue 758, Message 1 of 11


The {Wall Stree Journal} of 22 October has a short article headed
"Directory Assistance Without Dialing 411".  It describes a product
offered by PhoneDisc USA Corp, of Warwick, NY, which consists of two
CD-ROMs which list 90 million "residential listings" for $1850;
quarterly updates are $400 per year (I presume it is the first set of
disks which costs $1850).  "By contrast, a collection of all the
nation's phone books costs about $60,000 and weighs more than 10,000
pounds."  The article does not explicitly state whether PhoneDisc has
addresses with its listings, and since a CD-Rom is about 560 MB, with
9E9 listings, there's not a lot of room left after the name and the
number.

Now, here's the bad part: the source for this data is NOT the phone
companies, but the databases of direct-marketing companies.  This
means the data may be as much as 15 months out of date (no explanation
offered of where that came from).  Also, PhoneDisc does NOT
(presently) allow reverse searching (number -> subscriber name).

Apparently (someone from Purdue asked about this the other day) NyNex
and US West are the only local operating companies that publish their
listings on CD-ROM.  The October 15 Datamation indicates that the
charge for four workstations accessing the US West database for
fourteen states with monthly updates is $25K/year.  Also, Southwestern
Bell is the only company so far that has signed up for AT&T's on-line
service.