After almost 140 years of faithful service, the Netherlands is getting rid of the printed telephone book.
The publisher announced that the internet has made the directory redundant and thus the era of the telephone book has come to an end.
"It is the only book in the Netherlands where almost everyone has used it at least once," publisher Erik Wiechers said on Dutch radio on Thursday.
The vast majority of Dutch people are looking up phone numbers in the online edition of the telephone book, the publisher said.
Only a small group of elderly people in rural areas still use the book and this population will be trained this year to search for numbers online.
In the first issue of the Dutch telephone directory in 1881 there were 49 addresses. In the 1980s, almost 7 million copies were in print.
The telephone book will be distributed to the households for the last time from February.
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