Despite being heavily advertised on radio over the holidays, the January 31st launch of the 0133, free-to-call, business directory has been delayed until the end of March.

The blame has been put on additional building and testing of the network as well as certain carriers failing to activate the 0133 number for their users.

“Callers on Telecom, Vodafone, Telstra and Compass networks and all landlines will be able to make free calls to the service,” said Prentice Robb, a founders of the service. “But some of these are only just now being activated and need to be tested before the service can be made available to the public.  2degrees has yet to activate the number, but expects it to be live in the near future.”

Business subscribers have also been slow to update their details.

“We are a couple of months behind our suggested schedule but it is a strategic delay to ensure that our service standard isn’t compromised,” Robb continued.

The website for the service has not yet been updated with news of the delay.

We’ve asked 0133 for an update on the number of businesses who have paid and signed up to the service.