800-The-Info (or 1-800-843-4636) was a toll-free
directory assistance
In telecommunications, directory assistance or directory inquiries is a phone service used to find out a specific telephone number and/or address of a residence, business, or government entity.
Technology
Directory assistance systems incorporate ...
(DA) and information service provided in the United States by
Verizon
Verizon Communications Inc., commonly known as Verizon, is an American multinational telecommunications conglomerate and a corporate component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The company is headquartered at 1095 Avenue of the Americas ...
.
800-The-Info was subsidized by businesses that purchase advertising space on the service. Callers did not pay for the service, but had to listen to ads. The service offered local business listings including numbers and addresses.
How it worked
Like other advertising supported services, callers use a toll-free number to reach an automated system. They then can ask for a particular business, or ask for business recommendations by a location in a city. This type of category search is different from typical 411 requests that focus on asking for specific listings. At the outset, the system plays an advertisement and there can be other ads later on in the call. The system can also provide details to the caller's wireless phone via
text message
Text messaging, or texting, is the act of composing and sending electronic messages, typically consisting of alphabetic and numeric characters, between two or more users of mobile devices, desktops/laptops, or another type of compatible comput ...
.
The free-DA market
Verizon’s service competed with many new entrants providing similar services.
1-800-FREE-411
1-800-FREE-411 is an American service offering advertising-supported directory assistance, operated by Marchex.
Service
Callers dial 1-800 (888 or 866)-FREE411 73-3411from any phone in the United States to use the toll-free service. Sponsors cov ...
is currently the market leader with reportedly 20 million calls per month in 2007.
AT&T
AT&T Inc. is an American multinational telecommunications holding company headquartered at Whitacre Tower in Downtown Dallas, Texas. It is the world's largest telecommunications company by revenue and the third largest provider of mobile te ...
's yellow pages, and others, are also now competing for this small but growing segment. Current growth figures suggest the segment will reach 1.5 billion calls per year in the U.S. by 2010.
Nearly all of these services targeted traditional, paid DA services, rates of which can range from $0.39 on a
landline phone
A landline (land line, land-line, main line, home phone, fixed-line, and wireline) is a telephone connection that uses metal wires or optical fiber telephone line for transmission, as distinguished from a mobile cellular network, which uses ...
to $1.99 (i.e. Verizon wireless) or more on
cell phones.
This form of pure substitution may bring in new users but it also will capture volume from traditional DA services.
What was not clear for any of these providers is whether there will be enough expansion in advertisers to support the business model.
See also
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4-1-1
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Bing Mobile
Bing for mobile (formerly ''Live Search Mobile'') is a search tool for handheld mobile devices from Microsoft as part of their Bing search engine. It is designed for mobile device displays. Bing Mobile is built into Windows Mobile and Windows Pho ...
*
Speech recognition
Speech recognition is an interdisciplinary subfield of computer science and computational linguistics that develops methodologies and technologies that enable the recognition and translation of spoken language into text by computers with the ...
References
{{Reflist, 2
External links
Official 800-The-Info WebsitePampers Toll Free Phone Number
Directory assistance services
Telecommunication services
Telephone numbers in the United States