The Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL), Pune, stopped printing its telephone directory in 2007, but now there is some good news as a private firm has come up with a directory that contains contact numbers of about 40,000 government and private establishments in and around Pune.

For the firm, Indiacom Limited, it was not a virgin territory as it was the publisher of BSNL directories in Pune region for 15 years.

But unlike a traditional BSNL directory, there are no names of individuals in this version.

"We are circulating the directory free of cost to busi- ness establishments and traders in the city. We will distribute about 3 lakh directories in Pune region over the next couple of months with the revenue source being advertisements. The new Pune directory will be replicated in cities like Ahmedabad, Hyderabad and Vadodara soon," said Anshum Mandore, head, marketing and business development, Indiacom Limited.

The new directory, not quite as thick as a regular city telephone directory, follows the same format as that of the BSNL white pages and yellow pages with only difference being that it has num- bers of all the service providers, including cell phone numbers. "It was a difficult task to compile the telephone numbers of all business establishments and offices in Pune. It has numbers of almost all service providers. But we are not new to this business as we have been publishing directo- ries for the BSNL for the past 15 years," said Mandore.

Source: The Indian Express By Arun Jayan City firms get new telephone directory