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Telephone based tobacco cessation services, or quitlines, have become central components of many comprehensive tobacco control programmes. This paper provides an overview of their history, noting milestones in the growth of quitlines. Key factors in their worldwide adoption were solid evidence from clinical trials with large community samples and strong backing from public health officials. Quitlines are now available throughout most of North America, Europe, Australia and in many other locations around the world. The paper also offers several recommendations for future directions in quitline practice and research. Benchmarks should be established for key areas of quitline implementation, such as accessibility, quality and cost efficiency. Advances in pharmacotherapy, telephony and web based applications should be investigated for opportunities to expand service offerings. Research and development are needed to determine how best to serve a diverse clientele in the most cost effective manner. Funding should be expanded and diversified to enable quitlines to serve much larger numbers of users. Healthcare providers should be targeted for quitline promotion, to engage them in a broad effort to increase the number of patients receiving cessation messages from clinicians. The goal of quitline promotion should expand to include an increase in unaided quit attempts in the population. Early research findings were quickly adopted in quitline practice, and future research to answer questions that have arisen through the implementation of quitlines will probably also find quick adoption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]