116 3rd St SE
Cedar Rapids, Iowa 52401
Companies yank cord on residential phone books
MICHAEL FELBERBAUM, AP Business Writer
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) - Dark days are ahead for the white pages. Regulators in many states are giving phone companies permission to stop printing residential listings since fewer people are using them.
Companies like Verizon and AT&T argue that consumers now depend on the Internet and mobile phone applications to search for the numbers they need. More people are also ditching land lines altogether.
The move helps the companies' bottom line and reduces environmental impact by eliminating the need for all paper and ink for the heavy directories that started with a single page 132 years ago.
New York, Florida and Pennsylvania have recently approved requests to halt distribution of white pages. States that have have granted permission to quit printing residential listings or have requests pending include Oklahoma.
Copyright 2010 The Associated Press.
This photo taken Tuesday, Nov. 9, 2010, shows Emily Goodmann sitting with a small stack of phone books at the Northwestern University Library in Evanston, Ill. Goodmann is a doctoral student who is doing her dissertation on the history of the telephone book. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)
Daily Newsletters