Does England want Any Question Answered?

If you've ever been caught in the frenzied battle of a British pub quiz, then you'll know the real reason that a few English cellphone carriers have launched a new service that can provide any exact answer to any bizarre question — pub quiz cheaters. Orange, Vodaphone, and O2 have all recently introduced Any Question Answered (AQA), a service which combines human and computer-automated research to answer a caller's random text message. The answers come in the form of short precise answers, which the makers contend will rival the unclear answers received from Internet search engines. The service currently employs about 30 researchers but if AQA
gains popularity they are looking to extend throughout Europe and raise the researcher number to around 1,000. Since each call costs about one pound (currently $1.76) the average user might have to be really desperate to use the service, but come Sunday night around 7pm or so the bloodthirsty pub-quizzers, aided by a series of pints, might light up the AQA line (which is technically cheating, right?).