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Australian Telephone Directories
In Australia, we are very limited in the way of phone and address searches. Telstra®, through its subsidiary Sensis®, maintains a stranglehold on its telephone directory service, and has been quite effective at removing any opposition that makes use of its data.
The online White Pages® service provides a simple search by name, address, and location.
Australian telephone directories on CD have come and gone over the years, with independants sued out of business by Sensis®. The White Pages on CD, produced by Sensis®, has also been discontinued.
Business telephone directories can be useful at times for locating people. The online Yellow Pages® service provides a who, what, and where search. Other Australian business telephone directories are also available.
Online business searches such as Green Pages are no longer online.
Organisation telephone directories, such as those provided by Universities and large businesses, can be used to obtain direct contact details for those within the organisation.
Discontinued phone directory CDs, including those produced by DTMS, are one of the only means of conducting reverse number searches in Australia. DTMS CDs for sale are rare, although you may find copies at certain stores (usually at 10x its original retail price), or through online auctions such as eBay. Many Private Investigators and other organisations purchased CDs when publicly available, and still make use of them today. You may be able to locate an Investigator willing to conduct a reverse search for you, although this will undoubtably attract a fee. Note that the CDs are outdated, and their effectiveness reduces as each year passes.
It is reported that Sensis® will provide reverse searches to government agencies and other companies at their discretion.
Online reverse phone number searches may still be available online, however these are usually run as underground sites, and require password access. These also rely upon outdated data formerly found in CDs.
It is unlikely that we will see openly available reverse phone number searches available in Australia any time soon, due to restrictions on the use of IPND data. The Integrated Public Number Database (IPND) lists all Australian telephone numbers, and policy states that the data may not be used to provide a reverse search directory.
Note: Other countries such as the United States offer a wide variety of online telephone directory searches, including reverse phone, and reverse address.
Updated: 26th May, 2005
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