[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).