AT&T's 1-800-YellowPages ad-supported directory assistance service has now "gone national." Here's the press release. Ad support is provided by Apptera.

"Yellow pages" benefits from associated brand strength, with "1-800-YellowPages" scoring pretty well in several user surveys. In other words, more people are acknowledging and recognizing the service than we believe have actually used it. That speaks to the strength of the yellow pages brand, which AT&T now owns effectively.

In our forthcoming DA survey for example, it scored slightly better than GOOG411 with users, even though GOOG411 has been national for some time, while 800-YellowPages was only in selected markets until now. In the recent comScore-Jingle survey work it also did well.

YellowPages.com has a WAP site and YP411 SMS service, in addition to the voice search product.

YellowPages.com competes with GOOG411, Microsoft's 1-800-Call-411, Microsoft's Tellme (800-555-Tell) and the segment leader 800-Free-411.