| xxxx http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/2010/11/25/20101125phonebook1125.html White pages may soon join rotary phones as relics of the past by Anita Kumar - Nov. 25, 2010 12:00 AM Washington Post WASHINGTON - Score another one for the digital revolution. The phone book - or at least the residential white pages - is going the way of the rotary telephone and the phone booth. Verizon, the largest provider of land-line phones in the Washington region, is asking state regulators for permission to stop delivering the residential white pages in Virginia and Maryland. The company plans to make a similar request of the D.C. Public Service Commission in the next few days, Verizon spokesman Harry Mitchell said. Instead, the directories will be available online or, by request, in printed form or on CD-ROM. But the inches-thick white pages, a fixture in American households for more than a century, would no longer land on porches with a thud each year. Time to call the Smithsonian. "I'm kind of amazed they lasted as long as they have," said 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." For decades, regulators across the United States have required phone companies to distribute directories in paper form. The first directory - issued in 1878, two years after Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone - was a single sheet of paper that listed 50 residents of New Haven, Conn. It eventually grew to become an indispensable staple of American life. But now Verizon and AT&T, the nation's two dominant land-line carriers, say that most people search for numbers online and store frequently used numbers in their cellphones rather look than look them up in the white pages. Land lines are being disconnected at a rate of almost 10 percent each year, according to the companies, and white pages don't list cellphone numbers. A survey conducted by Gallup for SuperMedia, which produces the directories for Verizon, indicates that the number of households relying on residential white pages dropped from 25 percent in 2005 to 11 percent in 2008. "The way of getting this information has changed," Mitchell said. That means phone books often end up in landfills and recycling bins, or used for firewood or children's booster seats. "A ton of people don't want them anymore," said Duront Walton, executive director of the Virginia Telecommunication Industry Association, which supports Verizon's effort. "They're doorstops." Several states have approved the inevitable, including New York, Florida and Pennsylvania. About a dozen are considering similar proposals. In states where the residential white pages are available in paper only at a resident's request, about 2 percent of customers are asking for copies, according to the companies. Verizon and SuperMedia have millions of customers in Virginia, Maryland and Washington. The Yellow Pages Association, which represents 400 companies nationwide, says that more consumers use the yellow pages - 65 percent - than any other source when searching for local business information. "There's still a lot of value and high usage," said Amy Healy, the association's vice president of public policy and sustainability. Verizon and AT&T say the change from printed white pages will help the environment. In the 12 states and Washington where Verizon is the dominant carrier, savings could top 17,000 tons of paper each year. In Virginia, the company estimated it could save 1,640 tons of paper annually. Try telling that to Patricia Rawls, 59. The retired director of a non-profit wants a directory by every phone in her house in Norfolk, Va., and in her car, because, she said, thumbing through the book is quicker than looking up numbers online. "There should always be a directory, whether it is by special request or not," she said. "What happens if my child is doing his homework on the computer at the same time? Get him to get off so I can look up a number?" |