IT'S been etched on our brains for years but this weekend the plug will finally be pulled on the 192 directory enquiries number.

From Sunday 192 will be put firmly on the sales rack and a new set of fashionable numbers will hit the high street.

The directory enquiries market that has long been a monopoly for BT and its predecessors is now open to competition.

The 118 prefix has already been adopted in a number of European countries where the market has already been opened so all you need to remember is the last three digits.

Oftel says the aim is to see a competitive market which will in turn benefit customers by bringing down the cost of finding out a number. A total of 40 different telephone numbers beginning with 118 have been handed out to companies and 15 of them are already in operation.

Some people argue that with so many different companies in operation it is hard to keep track of the varying charges and rather than reducing the cost they new system may make it more expensive.

But while the country's millions of callers struggle to get to grips with the new system we ask whether the new companies are as sophisticated as the old?

I put the new 118 service to the maximum test by asking the various companies for the number of the new Sainsburys store at Castlepoint in Bournemouth.

As a goalpost I called the faithful 192 and it took the operator just 12 seconds to automatically pass on the number for the store.

But out of the other numbers available some took much longer to find the number, and some even failed to tell me how much it would cost to be transferred.

One operator from 118888 told me: "It is not standard practice to tell them.

"We do advertise it on the TV but we wouldn't actually inform them of the prices but if we were prompted we would do so."

He added that it costs 20p per minute to call the service.