Coming for cellphones: 411

Once, you had to pay the telephone company an extra fee if you wanted an unlisted number. These days, you can get one without even trying.

Just get a cellular telephone, or one of those new Voice over Internet Protocol (VOIP) phone services. In most cases, directory assistance operators won't be able to find you. That's because cellphone and Internet phone providers have not plugged their customers' numbers into the big national phone number databases.

That's good news for millions of consumers sick of harassment from telemarketers. But millions of others -- especially small-business people and the self-employed -- want their numbers listed. The absence of directory listings might persuade them to keep their traditional phones.

But times are changing. Starting next year, millions of cellphone users will be available through the same 411 service that lists standard phone numbers. And there are moves afoot to include VOIP telephone numbers in phone directories, as well.

Most of the nation's biggest wireless carriers have teamed up with Qsent Inc. of Portland, Ore., to produce a national databse of wireless phone numbers. ''Our plan is to roll it out to all the major 411 providers in the country," said Greg Keene, Qsent's chief privacy officer. ''For those of us that really want to be reached . . . it'll be available."

Directory assistance services are provided either by the phone companies themselves, or by independent firms like Infonxx Inc. of Bethlehem, Pa. When the Qsent database opens for business, these directory assistance providers will be able to connect to it and search for listed cellphone numbers.

Cellphone users who don't want their numbers listed need not worry. This will be an ''opt-in" database. A user won't be listed unless he requests it, and can get delisted whenever he changes his mind. Numbers won't be printed in a phone book or sold to telemarketers. They will be available only by dialing directory assistance.

Cingular, T-Mobile, Nextel, Alltel, and Sprint plan to participate in the system. But Verizon Wireless, the nation's largest cellphone carrier, with 47 million subscribers, wants no part of it.

''We feel that our customers come to us with an expectation of privacy," said Verizon Wireless spokeswoman Abra Degbor. ''We've been getting calls from customers thanking us for taking the position that we have." Degbor added that Verizon Wireless customers who need a directory listing for business purposes can post their numbers on Verizon's SuperPages online phone directory.

Verizon has taken the opposite tack when it comes to Internet-based VOIP telephone service. Users of the company's VoiceWing Internet phone service are not listed automatically in Verizon's 411 database, but they can request to be added to the database at no charge.

But other VOIP services don't make provision for customers who want listed numbers. A spokesman for Vonage Holdings Corp., the largest Internet phone provider, with 600,000 subscribers, said business customers should buy Yellow Pages advertising if they want their numbers listed.

Jack McMaster, chief executive of LSSI Inc., a telephone directory database company in Edison, N.J., thinks Vonage and other VOIP providers will soon change their minds. McMaster said small to medium-size businesses are the biggest potential market for VOIP phone services. ''Those guys have to be listed," he said.

So LSSI has launched a product aimed at Internet phone companies. Because LSSI's database is used by most directory assistance services, McMaster argues, a VOIP company that signs up with him will make its customers' numbers available to 411 callers nationwide. ''If they put it in our directory, just about any phone company in the United States can find it," he said.

McMaster said he signed up his first VOIP provider earlier this year, but declined to identify the company. He admits other Internet phone companies aren't scrambling to sign on. ''It's just getting started," he said. ''We haven't hit the tipping point yet."

Jeff Pulver, a cofounder of Vonage and longtime Internet telephone entrepreneur, thinks he can get the ball rolling. Pulver said he's launching his own VOIP number database business, which will debut this month at a trade show in Boston. ''I've been working on the project for the last several months and it came to fruition a few weeks ago," he said.

Like McMaster, Pulver believes many VOIP users, especially business people, are eager to be found. ''For everyone who wants to be anonymous," he said, ''I have to accept the fact that two or three others want to be listed."

Hiawatha Bray can be reached at bray@globe.com.