Cincinnati Bell Talking Yellow Pages

[dual 0]

Like the late Qwest DEX, the Cincinnati Bell Talking Yellow Pages is going away 1 Jun 2008. It's not very useful without the book, though interesting nonetheless.

513-333-4444

I had a job where there was no internet access and I actually used Qwest's DEX quite a bit. I'm sure that's a rare case anymore. It's just sad to see anything in the system die.

[dmine45 21]

Most of those Talking Yellow Pages went away a number of years ago.

I actually liked them when they were the fad of the day (late 1980s). Kind of unique for its day.

I remember when I called one of them one time when the audio tracks were not playing right. Kept jumping from one track to another - it was really bizarre. Wish I had recorded it.

[ThoughtPhreaker 157]

At least Qwest still offers 800-CALL-DEX . I'm afraid I grew up in Pacific Bell territory, where there never was such thing. What are these Talking Yellow Pages you speak of?

[dmine45 21]

The Talking Yellow Pages was run by Donnelly Directory as a gimick for people to use their competative yellow pages instead of the Baby Bell yellow pages. In some cases with independents, Donnelly published their directory and TTYP was included with the incumbent phone company directory (as was the case where I lived).

The system worked as such: When you saw a 4 digit "code" for a yellow page listing or a pre-recorded announcement (see below), you dialed a regular 7 digit local number in your area. This sent you to a IVR where you could enter the 4 digit code. I think you could listen to as many services as desired within a 10 to 15 minute period.

The front of the book had listings for pre-recorded announcements - such as a sports report (for each of the major sports), weather for various cities, horoscopes (I think Jane Barbe did these).

The Yellow Pages had "enhanced" listings (I'm sure at a premium price!) where a person who wanted to know more about a listing would call the 7 digit IVR access number and enter the code - listen to the 30 second ad - and had the option to press "1" to be directly connected to the company.

In theory, this could have worked well, but I'm sure the cost to run the service was very expensive. The sports and weather information had to be updated regularly (remember - this was before the Internet) and I'm sure this was done over LD phone lines.

With the Internet - these kinds of services are moot since most people would go to a web site to find out more info - or just go to the web site first. In some cases, they wouldn't even have to call the company!

Like all good things - the Internet changed the scene and made some things obsolete. TTYP is one of these.

[dual 0]

Thanks for the great post, dmine. 4121 is an example of an enhanced listing.

[dmine45 21]

Thanks for the great post, dmine. 4121 is an example of an enhanced listing.

Do you know of any more codes? Sports, weather, horoscope, area info, etc.

Thanks!

[dual 0]

Sorry, I don't. Unfortunately, I didn't write any down.

[dmine45 21]

No problem. I recorded some for preserving the sounds of TTYP. I dialed 2222 for sports, and then the 4121 for some lawyer's office.

The system operated very much like the Donnelly Directory version back in the 80s. Sad to see this thing go.

[ThoughtPhreaker 157]

2600 is time, and 1000 is national news. I thought these two were kinda funny; 2605, 3000 .

[Yauch 0]

I remember there being somthing like that here in Fargo. They had games on it that were pretty cool. Kind of choose your own adventure with little recorded bits and then to use you book of spells press one, to try your magic crystal press two ect. I remember there being a fantast one and then some sort of indiana jones jungle hunt one.

[ThoughtPhreaker 157]

I wish I could've taken a liking to this system earlier, it's pretty nifty. While it's still up, and Cincinatti Bell still feels like paying the voice artists to do updates, scan around a bit for different annoucements if you haven't already. Some of them, like inaccurate descriptions of the internet or computers as a whole circa the mid-90's are good for a laugh or two, but there's a few others out there that actually provide fair advice. I mean, as weird as it sounds, one of them helped me keep my ridiculously outgrown hair from making me look like some crazy person in the morning hours. Give it a look or two.

The recordings telling you how new of an innovation DSL is aside, does anybody get the feeling that this thing has been running before time itself?

http://www.textfiles.com/digest/TELECOMDIG...ss0301-0350.txt

(scroll down to "Cincinnati Bell Talking Yellow Pages")

Oh, right, and the post I made before was actually for world news, not national news. Here's a few others;

2518 - National News

2524 - Weather Headlines