Is the Number Up For the Residential Phone Book? 360
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.'"
Simple option? (Score:5, Interesting)
Create some method for people to opt out?
Or make existing methods more accessible or easier to use?
I know that if there was a simple phone number to call, and all I had to do is call in and say "Hi, I live here, don't bring me a phonebook, thanks" I would do that and be done with it.
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yes, but at some point you need to stop altogether because of cost. How much should be spent to get a few people a phone book?
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We didn't have a problem with the cost all throughout the past decade - Did paper get exceedingly expensive this decade?
The Yellow pages are mostly covered in cost by advertising.
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And when you reduce the "circulation" numbers the advetising revenue stays the same, right?
Fuel and labor (Score:2)
Did paper get exceedingly expensive this decade?
Even if not, truck fuel and labor to deliver a phone book have become more expensive.
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I don't think it's really about cost anymore. I think it's about the ridiculous amount of paper every year going to print these things that I, and most other Americans, stick squarely in the trash. No one is seeing the advertising anymore, and most of these things are just tossed, unopened.
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Unopened doesn't mean unused. For instance, if you replace your vegetable crisper with phone books, your fridge can now hold a keg level.
Re:Simple option? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Neighbors (Score:3, Insightful)
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:Simple option? (Score:5, Informative)
"how I was going to look up the number without Internet access"
It's printed on the bill they send you every month.
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You mean the one that they deliver to my inbox? (People still use paper bills?)
Re:Simple option? (Score:4, Informative)
Here's me looking up the pizza place: grab one of the multitude of computers in the house, wait two seconds while it wakes from sleep. Cmd-Tab to browser, Cmd-T for a new tab, type "$PIZZA_PLACE redmond" in the search box, click (what is typically) the first link if the phone number isn't already displayed in the link preview. Oh, who am I kidding? I have their website bookmarked and ordered it online.
To each their own, and your task flow is obviously different than mine (what is this "boot" you speak of?), but there's no way the pizza would get here any quicker if I used a phone book.
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I keep my paper phone book in the car, where I'm not liable to be able to look something up online.
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How much should be spent to get a few people basic phone connectivity?
In the aggregate, a fair bit. [wikipedia.org]
The question, I guess, is whether the "few" of the "need paper directory" case are valued as highly as the "few" of the Universal Service case.
Opt-out -> opt-in (Score:4, Interesting)
Hehe, here in the Netherlands there was a TV report recently where people complained that they still received the phone book despite opting out. Then it was reported that in Belgium you don't get one anymore unless you ask for it (opt-in). Seems like a better way to me, cuts out all the waste from people that are too lazy to opt-out.
Re:Simple option? (Score:4, Interesting)
How about the even simpler option of opt in? If you find that only 11% of people use it, then making an opt out available requires 89% of the population to call in and ask to be removed.
The idea they have of making it available on CD or in print, on request, is the best way to go.
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I think putting it on a cd is an excellent idea.
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Re:Simple option? (Score:4, Interesting)
Not everyone has a computer, not everyone has one with a CD(today). I'm still waiting on internet service at home; the phonebook has been a lifesaver at the moment.
I picked a couple up at the local telephone company store, they just have a bin of them, a lot like how JCPenny and Sears would have a stack of catalogs.
Perhaps we can keep them, but do we need to print them every year anymore? Oh, and I'd say that since cell phone users have unlisted numbers by default, their usefullness is declining. Many younger people don't have home phones today, and that age is rising. Taxes on it are insane.
I'll 'have' residential phone service because it came bundled with my internet*(any day now!). Still, there's no phone hooked up to it, so when it gets listed it'll just ring and ring. Maybe give direct them to the default mailbox that I won't monitor. Worse than useless, but I'll be in the whitepages because it'd cost $2/month for me NOT to be in there. Once I get more settled, I'm going to start calling to see if I can get the phone itself shut off - even if it only saves me the taxes, that'd likely be $12/month or so.
*Better deal than cable, with which they'd effectively require me to buy cable, and the local cable has caps that the average slashdotter would bust without trying.
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Re:Simple option? (Score:4, Insightful)
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In TFS: it's available in most cases.
However, I'd rather keep the white pages, and ditch the yellow pages. I actually use the former, the latter is just annoying and makes it difficult to find what I want interspersed with all the crappy adds.
Then again, with Google and anywho, I've not opened either in years. They both end up simply going from the doorstep to the recycle box.
Re:Simple option? (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.yellowpagesoptout.com/ [yellowpagesoptout.com]
This site will search, based on your zip code, for all opt-out options available in your area.
This site made the rounds last month on a number of blogs....
Not everyone is 20 (Score:2, Insightful)
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I'm 46, and I have wanted the phone book to go away for over 10 years. Based on the drop in phone books, most people don't want it, AND most people are well over 20.
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Your whitepages must be different than mine, as mine has businesses listed in addition to people.
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Mobile internet? Go there and see if they're open? My phone charges in my car, and I can find any place, and often the hours without having to actually call.
If you really want a phone book, then get one. They're not saying they won't have one. They're just saying that they won't give you one unless you ask for it. If you still have a wired phone and no mobile Internet, then you can ask for one.
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I think there's a pretty simple consistancy check to run here - if you are using your home phone to do these things, then sure, you might want a phonebook. But most people have cell phones. If you belong to a gym, you could have put the contact entry in there (though I don't expect you to have your grocery store.) But even more people nowadays have smartphones - it's one quick trip to Google Maps for me. Same data, less dead trees.
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I mean, if you have a phone that works, you have the ability to call people and ask them to find a number for you. If you don't have a phone that works, a phone book won't help you anyway.
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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
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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.
I have never used the Whitepages. (Score:2)
But even before I got internet I rarely used the white pages. Many people we knew had their numbers unlisted, and more were in adjacent towns not included in the book we received. Growing up my family always had separate phone number lists sitting next to the phone - one we made ourselves with friends/family and common businesses, and printed directories for all the groups we were in: church, boyscouts, band, etc. I honestly can't remember ever using the whitepages my entire life.
Now that many people have c
it's about (Score:2)
damn time.
I'm torn (Score:2)
On one hand I never use the thing making it a giant waste of paper.
On the other hand when the power is out it comes in handy as all my numbers are either stored in autodial or a local Google search away both of which don't work with the power off...
Re:I'm torn (Score:5, Informative)
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Mine never have. So yes - I feel quite sheepish now.
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Cordless phones dont for obvious reasons. A simple 1980s style corded phone will work fine when the power is out. Although.. I havnt used one like that since I was a child.
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Seriously? Obviously it's not going to work with VOIP, but you've had a POTS line that didn't work when the power was out? Not a cordless phone... needs a power receiver. Just a simple ol' phone plugged into the wall.
The phone system runs on 48v, it's always there. There are some variances, such as when it rings it goes up to 90v. I'm surprised fewer people haven't tried to tap this power source.
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I presume you live in a high rise apartment building or something in a large city. That's the only instance I can think of where the loss of mains power will kill the phones, and only then if the building owners are too lazy/cheap to set up proper backup power for the system.
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Landlines work when the power is out. They are powered by voltage on the phone line which is supplied separately from your electrical connection.
But yeah, I don't get what he is saying about phone numbers either.
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Apparently I'm living in the stone age - other people's phones work when the power is uot.
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Back in the stone age, phones worked when the power went out. Now that we're in the enlightened age, we have far more downstream switching hardware on limited-time UPSs which when they run out, entire network segments go down.
Bizarre circumstances do arise, however. Last summer, the power went out for much of my county for a couple of days. My neighbors on RCN land lines had no phone service, but when I hooked some solar panels up to my FIOS modem, I discovered that the upstream FIOS routers were still
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As a person that lives in hurricane country, I can tell you that during a major disaster cell service is one of the first things to go. Landline service will often be up and running when nothing else works, electricity out for 100 miles in every direction for days and the land lines still work.
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Good old copper landlines still work just fine without power.
More accurately, if you're on a copper line then you get all the power you need for free right from the phone company.
If they want to cut that cost (Score:2)
If they want to cut that cost, they will need to find a highly effective way to ensure that the handful of people who do use them (lots of elderly and poor folks) have a very easy way to get one.
In the meantime, paper books aren't too hard on the environment, and the cost of printing them it nothing against even one month's profit on a landline phone.
In short, the status quo isn't that bad.
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The cost is in the distribution. In many cases, phone books are profitable due to the menagerie of advertising they contain. There are quite a few for-profit companies out there doing this, but I imagine doing the leg work to make them profitable isn't something the utilities want to do.
No way! (Score:2, Funny)
What am I supposed to burn in my fireplace? Wood? Bull, you burn wood. This aint' 1876, bitch. I start my phone book fire by rubbing two Blackberry's together and heat the rest of the rooms in my house using monitors to watch my live video stream of the blaze.
power outage (Score:2)
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Your phone works in a power outage?
When did this happen? I must be living in the stone age.
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They've always worked that way.
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Just who would you call during a power outage, out of the blue, all of a sudden? Knowing you won't have a big white book, you should have a small personal file/folder/address book containing emergency numbers. Or even without cellphone reception, you can still look it up in your mobile's own phonebook.
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The situation is even more fundamental than this. Who on earth are you going to call in a powercut who's number wasn't already in your Mobile? If you can think of a list, then perhaps now is a good time to write those numbers down in an address book, or ... umm put them in your phone.
If your greeting to them is "yo dude" I somehow doubt that they are someone you need to go to the white pages for :)
Can we get rid of Verizon home phone service too? (Score:2)
The apocalypse (Score:5, Interesting)
As an official Old Guy, I find that rituals often have value. The morning trip to the bird feeder gives me a measure of purpose, and opening a phone book to look up a number gives me a bit of awe at the scale of my surroundings, and fixes the number in my mind for a few seconds longer than otherwise might be the case. A hypothetical EMP probably won't damage my black dial phone, and field trips to the central office indicate it might well not be damaged either, so it's nice to think two Old Guys could look each other up regardless of the internet being destroyed and chat for a while before the food runs out and the batteries in the central office run down and wild dogs begin to tear everyone apart.
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Even worse, you'll miss out on your favourite past time of crossing off people who die from the book.
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Rituals have value as long as they are relevant and beneficial. This particular ritual is a waste of resources.
Haven't used it in a decade (Score:2)
A few days ago, i received my new residential phonebook. When i looked for the old one, i found it still shrink-wrapped. Same happend with it's predecessor and the one before it.
Since i get them delivered to my home door, i don't care much. But i wouldn't waste any effort to get a new phonebook.
The Cell Phone Killed The Phone Book (Score:2)
This was all brought about by the fact cell phone numbers were not published in the white pages, the reliability of the system failed when a large percentage of people were not listed.
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The white pages haven't been the primary utility in phone books for a long time. It's the yellow pages.
Phone books actually are fairly effective advertising vehicles for companies: a person new to town can open it up and quickly find out what's available in their locality for hardware stores, attorneys, groceries, etc. They're effective to advertise in, because pretty much everyone keeps one around the house "just in case".
For white pages, you get the number of the person you want to contact from the person
Paper form optional (Score:2)
nostalgia (Score:2)
There are people nostalgic about anything, but this is a very good move. Who knows how much paper and other resources is wasted printing those damn things every year.
Save some paper (Score:2)
Privacy (Score:2)
As ever, my primary concern is user privacy. There are a variety of controls in place that govern the maintenance and use of call logs that the phone company keeps. None of those laws would apply to logs of phone number lookups. I would expect privacy to eventually settle to about the level (and consistency) you see for library checkout history, but without starting a conversation, it'll just end up as one more bit of data the phone company call sell about you (assuming you have the same company for phon
Waste of paper (Score:2)
Funny names (Score:2)
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I certainly hope not (Score:2)
Bell was NOT the inventor (Score:3, Insightful)
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?
I'd be totally on board for this if... (Score:2)
... they weren't charging for directory assistance.
While I can't remember the last time I bothered looking something up in the Book, it seems sketchy to expect folks to subscribe to a different service (internet) in order to fully use this one.
In Canada... (Score:2)
The white pages (residential) are only available upon request starting this year in the following cities: Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, the Ottawa-Gatineau area and Quebec City. Before that they were on a 24-month cycle starting in 2005.
If you want to request a phone book, go here: http://delivery.ypg.com/delivery/ [ypg.com]
It's Not Nostalgia For Some (Score:3, Insightful)
conundrum (Score:3, Interesting)
So, how do you call the power company when the electricity goes out? I mean the first time the electricity goes out, I mean (because by the time the electricity goes out for the second time, you will have looked up the number and put it in your cellphone.) Wait, no, you just look it up on your cellphone the first time, because your cellphone can access the internet.
I guess people with cellphones that can't access the internet to look up a number are becoming as rare as people with no cellphone and only a cordless phone on their landline.
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Usually the service number can be found on a recent bill, unless you get your bills online, like I do. Even if that's the case, you should be able to power up a laptop and retrieve the number from your emails.
No More Monitor stands!!! (Score:2)
This is going to stink! For years we've used the phonebooks at work as monitor stands. Most of our monitors do not have height adjustable stands, so when we end up with 2 different sized monitors they don't line up AT ALL. A few phonbooks later and all of our top edges are the same the same along all 4 monitors.
Basement Shooting Ranges (Score:2)
Old phone books make excellent backing for targets in your basement shooting range. Back in my high school days, a friend converted his semi-automatic MAC-10 to fully-automatic with a new lower receiver. Ma Bell would have been proud to see how her phone books stood up sturdily against a hail of .45 caliber slugs.
Google "Uses for old phone books" for more information about this wonderfully useful material.
Now, can we get rid of the Yellow Pages? (Score:2)
I have TWO sets of Yellow Pages dropped on my driveway from two different companies, covering the Washington DC metro area.
I also get THREE sets of local directories for my city (Bowie).
And two free local newspapers.
NONE of them have a simple way to opt out, because they make their money from being able to say "we dropped our stuff on N thousand driveways in the area".
I think the only way to get them to stop will be to have them arrested for littering.
Toddler (Score:2)
The Phone Book is dead (Score:3, Insightful)
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:The Phone Book is dead (Score:4, Interesting)
Note that in most European countries, as the mobile phone billing system is reversed (caller pays, not callee, unless roaming in another country) it is quite popular to have mobile phone numbers in the yellow/white pages.
Just looking at the pizza section of my local area, about half the numbers are mobile numbers. Looking at the doctor section, all the doctors that do house calls have a mobile listed. Some people have the same mobile number for longer than their landline. During my teens, I had one mobile phone number, and about 8 different landlines.
This being said, you have to draw a line at some point. Would I look up my neighbour's number at 2AM? No, I'd just pull the curtains after giving him the finger. If I need to urgently call a teacher, why don't I already have the number? When I was a kid, the head teacher would ask for our phone number, at the beginning of every year. I did exactly the same, and wrote it down somewhere.
Plus, the shoot-first argument is only valid in the US. To be fair, I've never had a neighbour who'd stop something I found annoying even if I asked. Having a phone number wouldn't really matter anyway.
Please think of the children! (Score:4, Funny)
And what to use for haircuts?
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You have children and you don't have all of the Harry Potter books?
Where will the online services get their data? (Score:5, Interesting)
The free online "white pages" services have usually obtained their data by scanning phone books. Where will they get their data now?
Since Feist vs. Rural Telephone, it's been settled law in the US that the listings in telephone directories are not copyrightable. There's no originality. This created the third-party directory industry. But for online directories, there are EULAs and rate limiting on queries. There's no way to do a bulk download. "Whitepages.com" has these terms: [whitepages.com] "Among other limitations, you may not: ... compile the Results Data in a database and store such data for any future use ... publish, transit, distribute, or resell any Results Data." AnyWho (run by AT&T) has the terms: [anywho.com] "You agree that you will not use the Service or the information obtained through the Service ... for incorporation into a commercial product or service ... to download directory listings or other information by using any type of automated means ...".
So another data source that used to be open is now closed.
Re:I simply throw them away or recycle (Score:4, Insightful)
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).
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It would be better if you took it to a recycling center. Alot of cities have neighborhood recycling centers, and youd do the trees a favor if youd drop it off there instead of the trash can.
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Meh. I still need kindling to start fires in the fireplace, and since I stopped getting the newspaper the unused phone book pages work great ;)
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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".
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I called yellow book once and told them that one of their representatives had left their trash in my yard, littering. I cited the local fine for littering and told them that if they didn't come get it I was calling the police. The next day it was gone.
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The yellow pages arnt going anywhere, they still make money. Its the white pages that are going the way of the dodo.
Re:Suprised! (Score:4, Funny)
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Now how are kids supposed to reach the table without phone books to sit on?
Those 800 page long-obsolete tech books you keep on your shelf but can't bear to part with. Taking just a quick glance at my own shelf indicates that the SCO Unix System V SVR3 reference manual would substitute quite nicely for a medium-sized metro area. phone book.