In age of cell phones and the Internet, the White Pages just keep shrinking. And hundreds of pages of government and business listings are now in the Yellow Pages.

 

JASON GERTZEN, The Kansas City Star

Kansas City Star, The (MO)
2007-06-26
Section: FRONT
Edition: 1
Page: A1

Could the White Pages be going the way of the Dodo?

The latest version of the ever-shrinking directory of residential phone numbers began arriving recently in the Kansas City area. This year, though, the changes went beyond a dwindling number of residential listings as more people go wireless. AT&T Inc. cleaved 300 pages of government and business listings from the phone book, shifting them earlier this year into the Yellow Pages directory of companies and commercial services. The Yellow Pages directory now carries an alphabetized listing of businesses along with its traditional categorized directory.

"The product makes perfect sense," said Jayne Anglesano, a regional marketing manager for AT&T. "Yellow Pages usage is geared toward a consumer trying to find businesses to spend money with. It kept all the business references between two covers."

Even before moving out government and business listings, the White Pages had been getting slimmer in recent years as growing numbers of consumers abandoned their home phone lines -- and accompanying directory listings -- in favor of cell phones. Residential listings in the latest edition of the White Pages, for example, total 1,033 pages, down from 1,055 a year ago and 1,095 a year before that.

The phone book has been affected by many of the same technology trends shaking the foundation of the telecommunications industry.

"The usage of the residential White Pages has been on the decline," said Vince McDonough, an AT&T spokesman. "People find those listings through other sources -- through the Internet primarily."

American consumers also have been abandoning traditional phone lines by the millions in recent years. The Federal Communications Commission charted a 9 percent drop from 192 million telephone lines in 2000 to 175 million at the end of 2005. Wireless telephone subscribers increased 125 percent to 203 million during the same period.

The FCC estimated that at least 11.3 million households relied solely on wireless phones at the end of 2005.

Proposals from time to time to create a directory of cell phone numbers have been greeted with concern and consternation. Fearing undesired calls bringing unwanted charges on monthly cell phone bills, consumers typically have demanded more control over who receives their number.

However, if a consumer relying exclusively on a cell phone wants that number listed in the book, all he or she has to do is ask.

"A cell phone isn't a listing we would put in the directory" automatically, Anglesano said. "We can do it by request."

Recognizing these various trends, AT&T executives decided to move the business and government listings to the nearly 1.5 million Yellow Pages directories distributed through the area earlier this year.

McDonough, the AT&T spokesman, said the changes were not a precursor to abandoning the residential phone books altogether.

"There are absolutely no plans to discontinue publication of the White Pages," McDonough said.

Others aren't so sure.

Just as public pay phones have all but disappeared as cell phones have become ubiquitous, old-fashioned phone directories eventually will suffer a similar fate, said Dianne Lynch, dean of the Park School of Communications at Ithaca College in New York.

"It is inevitable," Lynch said.

A bulky book that might not contain the most up-to-date information increasingly is a puzzlement to new generations of consumers, said Lynch, who is finishing a book chronicling changes in children who have grown up with the Internet and other high-tech advances.

Members of these younger generations, and even many older consumers who have adapted to the times, rely on Web searches or carry important phone numbers with them in their cell phones, Lynch said.

"You have it with you all the time, and nobody wants to carry a phone book around," Lynch said.

"When's the last time you looked at a phone book?"

SHRINKING WHITE PAGES

According to the FCC, the number of telephone lines dropped 9 percent from 2000 to 2005.