![]() “Sometimes they take them, sometimes they don’t.” These days, the books “sit here pretty long,” said Keschl, who added that even he rarely uses the directory anymore. As a doorman at an Upper East Side condo building since 1960, the 84-year-old has watched tenants’ fading reaction to the annual delivery of New York City’s white pages book – which incidentally weighs in around 3 pounds, 9 ounces, or a little more than a dozen iPhones. still let their fingers do the walking every month, and that 550 million residential and business directories are still printed every year.Īs for the white pages, Steve Keschl can attest to the declining interest. The industry trade group claims more half the people in the U.S. Unlike the residential white pages, the business directories printed on yellow pages are doing fine, at least according to the Yellow Pages Association. Dallas-based SuperMedia, which publishes Verizon’s telephone directories, has instead focused on its yellow pages and paid advertising listings, and their online equivalents. by Gallup shows that between 20, the percentage of households relying on stand-alone residential white pages fell from 25 percent to 11 percent. The number of traditional land lines has been declining for the better part of the decade, and now are being disconnected at a rate of nearly 10 percent each year, according to company financial reports.Īnd a survey conducted for SuperMedia Inc. That sheet grew into a book that became virtually a household appliance, listing numbers for neighbors, friends and colleagues, not to mention countless potential victims of prank calls.įewer people rely on paper directories for a variety of reasons: more people rely solely on cell phones, whose numbers typically aren’t included in the listings more listings are available online and mobile phones and caller ID systems on land lines can store a large number of frequently called numbers. The first telephone directory was issued in February 1878 – a single page that covered 50 customers in New Haven, Conn. It also can’t hurt their bottom lines to cut out the cost of a service that rarely gets used and generates little beyond nostalgia. Phone companies note that eliminating residential white pages would reduce environmental impact by using less paper and ink. “Anybody who doesn’t have access to some kind of online way to look things up now is probably too old to be able to read the print in the white pages anyway,” joked Robert Thompson, a pop culture professor at Syracuse University. Telephone companies argue that most consumers now check the Internet rather than flip through pages when they want to reach out and touch someone. 19 to provide comments on a similar request pending with state regulators. In the past month alone, New York, Florida and Pennsylvania approved Verizon Communications Inc.’s request to quit distributing residential white pages. Goodmann is a doctoral student who is doing her dissertation on the history of the telephone book. Emily Goodmann sits with a stack of phone books at the Northwestern University Library in Evanston, Ill. (AP) – What’s black and white and read all over? Not the white pages, which is why regulators have begun granting telecommunications companies the go-ahead to stop mass-printing residential phone books, a musty fixture of Americans’ kitchen counters, refrigerator tops and junk drawers. If a customer would rather not receive a directory, we provide information on the cover and inside the book on how they can stop future delivery, Customers can call 1-86 or visit to manage their directory delivery” ![]() ![]() They say the business white pages and yellow pages aren’t going anywhere, just the residential directories.įact is more consumers are keeping and using our yellow pages than they have in years, and our clients are receiving 10 percent more calls this year than last year from their advertising.ĪT&T, which also supplies yellow and white pages throughout the state, responded with the following statement: SuperMedia publishes the directories for Verizon. The California Public Utilities Commission did not immediately return a request for information. The Associated Press originally reported Thursday that various states began granting “telecommunications companies the go-ahead to stop mass-printing residential phone books.” However, California wasn’t included in the original story, which you can find after the break. If there are no objections we’ll make that change starting at the beginning of next year. We’ve submitted a letter to the California Public Utilities Commission seeking approval to end the mass distribution of white pages unless customers request them, either in printed or CD-ROM format. A staple of households everywhere, including California, may soon go away – the physical residential directory.
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