Abstract
February 14, 1876, the English-born American Alexander Graham Bell filed a patent for a system of voice transmission: He was the first to achieve this feat and became the inventor of what was later called the "Phone". In the twentieth century in April 1973, Dr. Martin Cooper, then director of research and development at Motorola, managed to make a call on a wireless phone. Generally, we refer to him as the inventor of the phone usually called "cell phone," "mobile phone," or "cellular."
The new generation of mobile phones has revolutionized our lives by allowing us to connect wherever there is mobile network. That said, despite the modernization process, there is an inevitable rule when calling a person: you need to know the phone number (on a landline phone as well as a cell phone). To do this, a special service must be established shortly after the widespread use of telephone in families of developed countries. The aim is to respond to consumer demand for such services; we speak of " directory inquiry". The directory inquiry is an information service to find a phone number based on a name orm address. In Germany, the telephone information service was launched in 1939 with the number 118.
Since 1921 in Switzerland and 1938 in France, dialing 11 gives you an operator who can then retrieve a desired number from the name of the user. However, this system lasted only until 1983. With the advent of Minitel, the number 11 is re-attributed to access to the information service of this new technology. The number 12 is created to replace the 11. The 12 is the only number of directory inquiry and it belongs to the state. This refers to state monopoly. In this study, we will develop the historical evolution of this service through the various forms it embodied. Indeed, the French telephone information service has undergone many changes at the pace of reforms that were imposed. It's a rich and transverse subject, for it offers the possibility to study different types of market organization for the same service.
We are going to develop four questions to organize our reasoning:
- How were directory inquiries organized on the market before they suffered reform?
- What elements triggered reform?
- Under which conditions was the market opened? With what consequences?
- How can we describe the market today, several years after the reform?
