Canada's Largest Cities Seeing the End of the Phone Book 206
innocent_white_lamb writes "Telephone directories are available on the Internet, and many phones even store their own directories. There is less and less demand for a printed phone book, so residential phone books will no longer be printed and delivered in Canada's seven largest cities. Do we now expect everyone's grandma to look up phone numbers on the Internet? Of course, the Yellow Pages, where businesses pay for a listing, will still be delivered."
Grandma's doesn't need to be yearly (Score:5, Interesting)
Why get rid of it completely? It doesn't need to be a "every year or never again" type of thing. Why not say you'll put out one new one every other year for a few years, then one new one every 5 years for a while?
Grandma's Future (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:People still use land lines? (Score:4, Interesting)
Exactly. Cell phone numbers often aren't listed in phone directories. To make matters worse, many people frequently change cell phone numbers, especially those with pre-paid phones; when the service expires so does the phone number (even if it was "ported", which comes as a nasty surprise for some).
Ron
Re:I wonder... (Score:3, Interesting)
Not only that, but increasingly you get crap results on the order of "FIND FIVE STAR HOTELS IN PODUNKVILLE" (population 12) -- the latest form of linkfarm, it seems.
I'd seen so much of this crap that I actually did not believe it when a motel listing came up for a town with a current population of (count them) 7 people... turns out for once it's real.
As to the "store locators" on chains' sites, about half the time they won't even speak to you if you ask for listings outside your immediate zipcode. Just gimme a damn sorted list and I'll find it myself; stop trying to be "helpful" by restricting what I'm show to what YOU think I'll want.
Re:People still use land lines? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm over 50, and the damned phone books haven't been much use for several years anyway. When Ma Bell and AT&T were the only people who published phone books, I could navigate them quickly and easily. Then half a dozen different companies started publishing them, all in slightly different formats. Then, a separate book for the yellow pages became the norm, meaning I had to keep up with yet another phone book. Then, each publisher decided that I really wanted to see a different set of cities listed in my directory, "helpfully" eliminating listings from cities or towns that routinely did business in.
I have relied on online directories for at least 5 years now, because the physical phone book is worthless!
Re:Misleading summary. (Score:3, Interesting)
Not for long! i emailed them last year and told them that if they EVER deliver another yellow pages to my door, to contact the biggest advertisers and tell them why the Yellow Pages are useless, and why I won't be buying from them. Then I'll bug everyone I know to do the same. Maybe we'll set up a web site and put up a prize - a couple of hundred bucks and some other prizes for the person who contacts the most advertisers and tells them to shove their Yellow Pages ads.
I haven't used them in a decade. And I'm sure that older people don't use them because most of the smaller ads are too small for their eyes, whereas they can change the font size on-screen easily. Granny knows how to use a computer nowadays. It's not 1980 any more.
Die, Yellow Pages, Die.
Re:People still use land lines? (Score:3, Interesting)
It costs money to receive a cell call
Only in the USA. Pretty much everywhere else in the world, it costs money to make a call, doesn't to receive it. Mobile phone numbers have their own prefix (rather than a geographic one, which doesn't make sense for a phone that can work anywhere in the world), so you know that it will be billed as a call to a mobile, rather than a call to a landline.
Most mobile phone companies charge the same amount for calls to mobiles as for calls to landlines, and make calls to their own network cheaper than calls to landlines, so it's often less expensive to call a mobile from a mobile than from a landline. In addition, for low-volume users, you can get a mobile with no fixed monthly fee. The amount I spend on calls with my mobile is less than half of the line rental for a landline (which doesn't include any calls).
Re:It's about time (Score:2, Interesting)