The New Phonebooks Aren't Here!

The same week that a story ran about telecommunications companies requesting an end to residential phonebooks, I ran across a book review that talks about the impact the phone book had on national commerce and society.

Phone companies say that their residential listings, sometimes known as "the white pages," are used by very few people anymore as people look up numbers online or have regularly used numbers stored in their own phones. White pages also don't include cell phone numbers, and more and more people are ending their landline service entirely in favor of their cell phones. If regulators allow them to stop printing the books, they say, then they will help the environment by not using as much paper and ink. And, oh yeah, it will save them money, since the directories are printed at their expense and individual customers aren't charged a fee for receiving one.

The companies have not sought an end to business directories, often called "yellow pages." Although their revenues are also decreasing as businesses spend more advertising online, they still made about $15 billion in 2009, which as the review points out, is more than the movie industry made at the box office. The main reason is probably that the telecom companies sell ads in the yellow pages, while they usually don't in the residential listings.

The book sounds interesting, as the writer examines the history of the phone book and ties it in to the continuing process of making more information available to more people in a more portable format -- the ability to enter hundreds of numbers into a personal cell phone directory or to have access to thousands upon thousands of them via online directories that can be reached from phones, netbooks and iPads is a straight step down the same road that included making contact info from every business in town available to everyone in one convenient set of listings.

Unfortunately, it will now be that much more difficult for one Navin R. Johnson to say "I'm somebody now!"