Verizon to 86 White Pages?

I don't need anything...except this phone book.

Navin R. Johnson's overwhelming joy over his "spontaneous publicity" on page 73 of the phone book may fall on deaf ears to children of the digital age now that Verizon is planning to stop production of the residential White Pages. The state's dominant local phone company asked legislators yesterday to allow them to end their automatic delivery of the directory, which could save up to 5,000 tons of paper a year. One building concierge said, “We end up throwing them away. Everyone goes online anyways."

A Gallup poll from 2008 said that only one in nine residents still uses the White Pages. A majority now call directory assistance or look up numbers on the internet. AT&T has already received permission to stop automatically distributing the directories in Florida, Ohio, Oklahoma and Georgia, but withdrew a proposal in North Carolina after the elderly complained they could lose contact with friends if they did not receive updated books every year.

The new proposal would hault automatic delivery, but already New Yorkers can notify the company if they don't want the White Pages delivered. SuperMedia executive Scott W. Klein said, “We made a conscious decision to make it easy for people to not get the book. We only want to create and provide products that people want to use." SuperMedia would still produce the Yellow Pages, which make money off companies wanting to be displayed more prominently.

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By Jaya Saxena in News on May 8, 2010 4:35 PM

Comments [rss]

andyleff

I totally agree that whitepages isnt really needed anymore, we run an online directory company, http://www.7mainstreet.com, and we license our software to print publishers and i would say that 90% o the ones we talk to are all talking about getting rid of their whitepages and dont ask for it in an online format either

ProcedureTurn

Please think of the DASH SNOW legacy...

bwahahahaha.... spoiled hamster cage loser.

Great father you were too!

he was such a phony anyways...

spiritross

But now all of us will be nobodies

At least with my name in the phone book

I was finally somebody

No

None of us are

---

sidenote

for the witty person talking about the rotary phone

with you banal mocking aside

I got a 1940s rotary phone to work with a landline

When the power goes out for an extended period of time

Guess who's phone is still working?

grizzzly

what will our 10-year-olds sit on to see over the steering wheel?

mdow

who will i call on my rotary phone if i can't look up the number in the white pages first?

justthinkin

What will Jack Lalanne rip in half now to show his prowess?

Spirit of 76

An iPad.

Mr Mel

And what am I supposed to use for a door stop?

Kevin Walsh

What about people who do not have the internet?

They do exist.

www.forgotten-ny.com

seaanemoneman

They can use their rotary phones to dial the operator and opt in to receiving the book.

schadenfreudian mensch

It's call a library or you know call 411.

dadoc

Just try to get off the "Supermedia" Yellow-pages merry-go-round. $110 a month just to have your name there, and you can only cancel once a year. WhoTF uses a Yellow pages these days, anyway?

Spirit of 76

I'm all for saving the trees, but do have one worry. Online directories can be notoriously inaccurate. I've found one that shows my landline number -- and I got ditched landlines eight years ago. Most people have cell phones nowadays anyway, and those numbers are unlisted.

ForrestWhitaker

Get rid of the auto-distribution system and make it request only for people who need it, ie cotton tops and the disabled.

Mordicai

The fact that these are still made in such quantities is criminal. Junk mail & litter, that is all these stupid things are.

nicemarmot

Pleasepleaseplease let this happen. I told them I don't want it and they dump one outside my door every year anyway. The paper's so cheap they don't even work as a doorstop.

xgeyiph772

Get rid of them. Phone company delivers dozens of them to every apt in NYC, and all but a handful get thrown away after sitting in the lobby for a month or so. A colossal waste of paper and manpower.