turns A page of the telephone directory, so familiar to the French. After one hundred and forty years of existence, the "phone book" will no longer be distributed the end of 2020, supplanted by its digital version, and the technology in general. While the white Pages, which list the numbers of individuals, will be delivered for the last time at the end of the year 2019, the last of the professional directories, the Yellow Pages, the will be up to December 2020, it was learnt on Friday from their publisher SoLocal, confirming information of the Paris .

" READ ALSO - SoLocal will reduce its workforce by more than 20 %

phone directories have been around since the 1880s and the beginnings of the phone. Their common name "book" comes from Sébastien Bottin, a statistician in the 19th century who was the editor of an Almanac of the trade, then became a "Almanach-Bottin du commerce de Paris, des départements de France and major cities in the world". After having resisted the rise of Minitel, directory papers have not made the weight in front of the internet.

The decision of SoLocal was expected, directory paper, having lost their relevance with the widespread access to the internet. Nine million directories will be distributed this year, against 57 million in 2007. Its distribution has already stopped in a geographic area considered to be sufficiently scanned, such as the Île-de-France, Rhône, Bouches-du-Rhône and the North.

In 2018, the group's turnover declined by 9.3% in 2018, to 670 million euros. The group has thus launched a plan to remove 1000 posts on the 4500. But the company hopes to see a resurgence of its sales in digital in 2019. For several years, SoLocal (ex Pages Jaunes, which also owns the trademark Mappy) was launched in a difficult conversion to digital. The group now offers business services to give them a better visibility on the internet. The digital version of the yellow Pages would be well used today by a French on two.

To mark the occasion, SoLocal will edit in some departments a version of "collector" of the last book physics of the French history. These models "collector" are available on order on the website of yellow Pages