[MrsPeaches]

Famously communist UK as well. BT (British Telecom) was the state owned telecom provider that also ran the phone books.

And famously communist Germany with Deutsche Telekom (Formerly part of the national post system, privatised in 1995) that also made telephone books. Also worth noting that the German government still has a significant stake in Deutsche Telekom.

Oh and famously communist Netherlands with KPN the state run post and telecoms provider.

And famously communist Spain with Telefonica being previously majority owned by the state (under Franco no less).

I mean most of European telecoms seem to have been state owned until the early 90s.

[emteycz]

I never said only communist states could own/owned telecoms. A lot of these changes - even in the west - came to be after communism in Europe has fallen.

[MrsPeaches]

The original quote was:

> The yellow pages were absolutely run by state-owned telecom operators, less than 25 years ago, all over Europe.

You then said

> Only because of the communist past

How is that not saying that it is only due to a communist past that there were state run telcos that were producing yellow pages?

Tbf I didn’t mention each and every name of the yellow pages equivalent (because time) but I think the assumption that the state owned telcos ran their respective yellow pages is fairly safe. Happy to be proven wrong though!

[emteycz]

What I meant was that it was "all over Europe" only because a half of it was communist, not that only communist states had public telecoms and/or the entire Europe was communist. I'm very sure at least the eastern part would have been mostly private-run if it wasn't taken over by the communists.

[MrsPeaches]

> I'm very sure at least the eastern part would have been mostly private-run if it wasn't taken over by the communists.

What do you base that on? Pretty much every western European country had state owned telcos. As far as I am aware, prior to the 90s, private telcos seem to the exception rather than the rule across the world. It seems mainly to be a specifically north American thing to have private telcos prior to that. Looking at the countries surrounding the former soviet states going from north to south:

Finland (originally a cooperative now owned by Norwegian state telco): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_Oyj

Sweden (originally state-owned): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Televerket_(Sweden)

Germany (originally state-owned): link above

Austria (originally state-owned): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A1_Telekom_Austria_Group

Italy (originally state-owned): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gruppo_TIM

Turkey (originally state-owned): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%C3%BCrk_Telekom

Looking east:

Japan: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nippon_Telegraph_and_Telephone

Malaysia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telekom_Malaysia

South Korea: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KT_Corporation

Australia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telstra

India: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bharat_Sanchar_Nigam_Limited#H...

Indonesia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telkom_Indonesia#Early_years

And a couple of others:

Switzerland: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swisscom

South Africa: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telkom_(South_Africa)

Brazil: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telebr%C3%A1s

I mean that's pretty much every major economy on the planet (with north America being the exception).