The auto­matic tele­phone switch was invented in 1891 by a Kansas City under­taker named Almon Brown Strowger. Leg­end has it that he became con­vinced that the local tele­phone oper­a­tors were direct­ing more callers to a com­pet­ing funeral home. (In one ver­sion of the story, the oper­a­tor is a daugh­ter of the other mor­ti­cian.) Strowger rea­soned that if cus­tomers could dial a tele­phone them­selves, all com­pa­nies would stand an equally fair chance of gain­ing new business.

One hun­dred and six­teen years later, AT&T is unveil­ing their lat­est ser­vice, “1-800-YellowPages.” This new direc­tory assis­tance prod­uct is avail­able at no charge to the user, but there’s a catch: after request­ing a num­ber, the caller must lis­ten to up to 4 tar­geted adver­tise­ments before the num­ber is divulged. The adver­tise­ments are cho­sen for their per­ti­nence to the type of busi­ness the caller seeks—in the­ory, they could be offer­ing to direct the caller to a com­peti­tor. Higher-priced ads have a fea­ture that offers the caller a chance to be con­nected imme­di­ately to the adver­tiser rather than be read the num­ber of his orig­i­nal choice.

Although using this new direc­tory assis­tance ser­vice is obvi­ously optional, I fear it sets the stage for a big depar­ture from the Strowger-era ideals of fair­ness that have bound the tele­phone indus­try for so many years. The impact this sort of adver­tis­ing could have on smaller, inde­pen­dent busi­nesses should be obvious.