Starting in January 1999, other companies will be able to offer the service currently available by phoning 192. Websites will be able to publish the information.

Cable and Wireless says it is investigating offering directory enquiries on the Internet.

Britain is now one of the few European countries where the "white pages" are not available online.

But now the telecommunications watchdog, Oftel, says the service must be opened up to competition.

This is already the case in other European nations like France, Germany and The Netherlands.

Australia, New Zealand and Canada also offer the service, and in America there are at least four different competing companies in the market, all offering free access.

It is difficult to get residential numbers online from BT

BT intends to launch some kind of Internet directory enquiries but details have not been given. It does offer a free Internet yellow pages service, however.

At the moment, the only BT alternatives to ringing 192 and paying 25p are PhoneDisc, a CD-ROM costing from £233.83, or PhoneBase, a BT database you can dial into which costs 15p a minute.

One company, i-CD Publishing, already provides UK telephone number information on the Net and on a £20 CD-ROM, but it does not have access to British Telecom's up-to-date database, relying on other sources of information including the electoral roll.

It says it has 42 million UK residents on its disc.

Customers who pay more can use i-CD's Website and CD-ROMs to "reverse search" - find someone's name and address from their telephone number.

Misuse of such a feature could result in prosecution by the Data Protection Registrar.

Rival business telephone directories are also published, but under licence from BT which owns the copyright in the information.

Privacy rights

The Oftel announcement also spelled out new proposed rights for telephone users.

Consumers will have the right to be listed in phone directories and have part of their address removed - giving only the name of the street rather than the number too.

They will also be able to indicate, free of charge, that they do not wish to have their details used for direct marketing.

Increased privacy protection is on the way

At the moment, one in four British households is ex-directory - the highest proportion in the world.

At present the proposed regulations would ban the use of direct marketing faxes and automated marketing calls without an individual's prior consent.

The necessary regulations are being drawn up by the Department of Trade and Industry in accordance with EU guidelines.