This ends a 140-year tradition as decreasing demand and expanding digitalisation made the production of phone books redundant, the company said.

Nearly 60,000 phone books were printed in 2017, but fewer than 17,000 in 2020.

Meanwhile, the number of phone books requested by subscribers dropped by half, the media and communications authority NMHH found in a survey.

The number of telephone directories distributed on CDs fell even more sharply, from 31,000 to only 2,500.

The phone service subscriber database is still available by calling 11800 or 11818 from inside the Magyar Telekom network.