Is the Number Up For the Residential Phone Book?

Hugh Pickens writes "The first phone directory was issued in 1878, two years after Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone and for decades regulators across the US have required phone companies to distribute directories in paper form. But now the Washington Post reports that Verizon, the largest provider of landline phones in the Washington DC region, is asking state regulators for permission to stop delivering the residential white pages in Virginia and Maryland. About a dozen other states are also doing away with printed phone books as surveys show that the number of households relying on residential white pages dropped from 25 percent in 2005 to 11 percent in 2008. The directories will be available online, printed or on CD-ROM upon request but the inches-thick white pages, a fixture in American households for more than a century, will no longer land on porches with a thud each year. 'I'm kind of amazed they lasted as long as they have,' says Robert Thompson, a professor of popular culture at Syracuse University. 'But there are some people nostalgic about this. Some people like to go to the shelf and look up a number.'"

Not everyone is 20

[blai]

Some find it easier to open a book than to get a computer up.

Re:I simply throw them away or recycle

[tverbeek]

They might include a "white pages" phone listing, but the point of those books is the "yellow pages": the advertising section. Those aren't going away, and asking to opt out of receiving them is going to be as fruitless as asking to opt out of junk mail. Less, in fact, because instead of being delivered by a single government-authorized agency (the USPS), the people delivering those worthless books to your door are a bunch of underemployed seasonal contractors working for several marketing firms. They aren't going to get any "do not deliver" notice, and wouldn't bother honoring it if they did (since they get paid per pound of wood-pulp delivered).

Re:I simply throw them away or recycle

[Anne_Nonymous]

As long as they are selling ads, they don't care if you use it.

The correct phrase to help banish phone books is "I found your business online".

Re:Simple option?

[Cwix]

I think putting it on a cd is an excellent idea.

Bell was NOT the inventor

[Anonymous Coward]

Bell did NOT invented the phone. I have no clue why it repeated over and over again. It was NOT Bell.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Philipp_Reis

That german inventor invented the telephone 17 years earlier and even coined the word "telephone".
US-centric bias?

It's Not Nostalgia For Some

[damn_registrars]

As hard as some people here may find it to believe, there are people in this country - perhaps even in your own neighborhood - who don't own computers. Hence all the online and CD-ROM directories in the world won't help them a bit; they need the printed phone book to look up numbers. They don't use the printed phone book because they want "nostalgia", they use it because it's the only resource they have (or want).

Re:Simple option?

[delinear]

It would have to be opt in, otherwise you end up with the situation where I call them, say don't deliver, then move out - the next person is expecting a directory but the adress is marked as do not deliver so they call up to complain. Every year, a week after the directories go out, they'd be inundated with people calling to complain. With opt in, the worst that would happen is you'll get a directory when you didn't want it and throw it in the recycling bin. Seriously, though, I don't understand why they don't just withdraw it completely except as a paid service for people who call and ask for it. A few weeks ago we got one of these (actually it was the yellow pages rather than the white pages) and I put it straight in the bin - usually I go put it in a cupboard for a year but I realised I've been doing that for the best part of ten years and I've never had to resort to it because the internet is so much simpler, and even calling the directory services is easier than digging out a paper version. If there are a handful of holdouts who like a bit dead tree version I'm sure they wouldn't mind calling for it and paying a small sum to cover the cost associated with producing a low-volume edition with reduced/no ads.

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[account_deleted]

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Re:Simple option?

[JSC]

I used my phone book just the day before yesterday. Probably the first time I've needed it in 3-4 years. I had to look up the number for Verizon tech support because my DSL connection died.

I actually sat there for 5 minutes trying to figure out how I was going to look up the number without Internet access before I remembered the phone book.

Re:Simple option?

[hedwards]

Except that anybody that can use the CD can already access it online. I'm sure there's probably a few people who can't, but they can use a paper version along with the folks who don't have a computer at all. I'd wager that it's a similar group of folks.

The Phone Book is dead

[cdrguru]

Not listing cell phones anywhere - even online - means there is no way to find the phone number of someone without a landline. As people continue to figure out the relability difference between a cell phone (very, very unreliable) and a landline (very, very reliable) and move to cell-only they drop out of any directory.

So, how do you find the phone number of your child's 3rd grade teacher? In 1960 you used the phone book. In 2010 you don't, period. People are now unreachable unless you have a prior relationship and they expect you to call them.

How do you find the phone number of your neighbor with a spotlight aimed at your window at 2:00 AM? You don't. You can either call the police or walk over there and hope they are receptive. Maybe they have a "shoot first and ask questions later" policy so the phone would be much, much better. The police would probably ignore you as a crank anyway.

When a cell phone was an unimportant adjunct and very, very costly it made sense not to have them in any sort of directory. In 1987 or so you could run up a charge of several dollars for someone by calling them. 23 years later it might not make sense to not have these phone numbers listed.

Re:Not everyone is 20

[jonbryce]

Then I won't be able to phone the grocery store anyway. I suppose I could try and dig out a landline phone from my cupboard and try and plug it in by candlelight, but to be honest it would be quicker just to step outside and walk to the local town centre. For me, and quite a lot of other people, a landline is something you use to attach an ADSL modem to.

Re:Simple option?

[Beardo the Bearded]

I use the phonebook too; it's faster than going to the computer, turning it on, waiting for it to boot, loading up FF, clicking on the Canada411 link in the toolbar, and typing in the name... retyping the name because it changed the focus and cleared the data I'd already entered... then changing the city because ONE TIME I looked up a number in a different city... then waiting for the search results to filter.

Oh, the version of me that looked up the number in a phone book is already done ordering the pizza.

Re:Not everyone is 20

[tukang]

What about when the power is out? How do you get the number to call hot food service X? or gym Y across town to see if they have power and hot showers? What if it's an extended outage and you are calling to see if grocery store Z is open (with or without power) to replenish your staples (food not brads)?

1-800-GOOG-411

Re:Not everyone is 20

[Internal Modem]

411

Neighbors

[rsborg]

I used my phone book just the day before yesterday. Probably the first time I've needed it in 3-4 years. I had to look up the number for Verizon tech support because my DSL connection died.

I actually sat there for 5 minutes trying to figure out how I was going to look up the number without Internet access before I remembered the phone book.

I was forced once to interact with my neighbors in a similar situation (phoneline dead, no cell either). Of course, in this day and age we're spared such unpleasantries by the abundance of wireless signals and the like.

Re:The apocalypse

[Rude Turnip]

Rituals have value as long as they are relevant and beneficial. This particular ritual is a waste of resources.

Re:Simple option?

[D Ninja]

You mean the one that they deliver to my inbox? (People still use paper bills?)

Re:Simple option?

[Eravau]

The one you get on-line?