Gary Price at ResourceShelf alerted me to the fact that enhanced DA provider 118218 in France (owned by InfoNXX, which also operates the U.K.'s 118118) has now considerably expanded its service using content and results from EU search engine Exalead. Users in France pay for 118128 like traditional directory assistance in the U.S., although it's considerably broader in scope.

In the U.S., Tellme, 1-800-YellowPages, Jingle Networks and Google (Goog411) are seeking to offer free, ad-supported enhanced DA. However, with the exception of Tellme, the only real enhancement vs. traditional is business category search.

And like Jingle's Free411, 118128 also offers a companion Internet local search and shopping site. In the U.K., InfoNXX's 118118 features ads, including contextual ads in return text messages responding to DA queries.