No More Printed Telephone Directories in Hungary

From 2022, telecom companies in Hungary are no longer obliged to display their subscribers' data in books or any other medium, ending the era of printed phone book after 140 years. Magyar Telekom's printed copies last year were the last ones in this category. One of the copies was donated to the Postal Museum.

The largest Hungarian telecom firm Magyar Telekom said in a statement on Wednesday that the phasing out of the telephone directory was due to declining consumer demand and the rise of digitalization.

According to market research by the National Media and Infocommunications Authority (NMHH), nearly 60,000 telephone directories were printed in 2017, but by 2020 there were less than 17,000, and the number of directories received by consumers has halved. The number of telephone directories distributed on electronic data storage media (CDs) has fallen even more steeply, from 31,000 to just 2,500, a 92% drop, they said.

The change had already been felt within the industry, with the rise of digitization over the past decades, as printed directories and CDs were replaced by online databases. The directory enquiries service will continue to be available to the public in the future.