BT takes on Yell with purple pages directories

The Telecoms giant BT yesterday fleshed out plans to re-enter the published directories market just a year after selling Yell, its yellow pages business. It will also expand its telephone directory enquiries business five months before that market is opened up to competition.

BT is not expected to publish a separate directories book at first but will instead include a directories section in its residential phone book, known as the white book. That directories section is expected to be purple.

"What we will do is integrate a section in the white book or, in some circumstances, perhaps have a separate book," said Patricia Vaz, the managing director of customer service at BT. "We're researching the colour and it looks as though purple would be good."

The move is part of a wider effort by BT, which bought the directories business Scoot for £8m in June, to expand its directories operations. It also comes just a month after the expiry of an anti-compete agreement with Yell, which was also recently forced to abandon its stock market flotation.

BT also said it would revamp its current 192 directory enquiries service by offering callers extra services such as weather forecasts, sports results and cinema listings.

The expanded 192 service will be launched on a new number, 118 500, toward the end of the year and will also be available on the internet. The 192 number will disappear from next August, in line with Oftel's timetable for deregulation.

"When we looked forward to deregulation, it was clear that we would need an integrated information management package," Ms Vaz said. "Deregulation is a huge opportunity for us to grow."

BT also reiterated that the moves to overhaul its directories operations were expected to generate an extra £100m of revenue a year by 2004-05.

A spokesman for Yell said: "We've had competition on our doorstep for some time but advertisers seem to like us. Are we frightened? No, we're not."