That sheet grew into a book that became virtually a household appliance, listing numbers for neighbors, friends and colleagues, not to mention countless potential victims of prank calls.įewer people rely on paper directories for a variety of reasons: more people rely solely on cell phones, whose numbers typically aren’t included in the listings more listings are available online and mobile phones and caller ID systems on land lines can store a large number of frequently called numbers. The first telephone directory was issued in February 1878 - a single page that covered 50 customers in New Haven, Conn. It also can’t hurt their bottom lines to cut out the cost of a service that rarely gets used and generates little beyond nostalgia. Phone companies note that eliminating residential white pages would reduce environmental impact by using less paper and ink. “Anybody who doesn’t have access to some kind of online way to look things up now is probably too old to be able to read the print in the white pages anyway,” joked Robert Thompson, a pop culture professor at Syracuse University. Telephone companies argue that most consumers now check the Internet rather than flip through pages when they want to reach out and touch someone. 19 to provide comments on a similar request pending with state regulators. In the past month alone, New York, Florida and Pennsylvania approved Verizon Communications Inc.’s request to quit distributing residential white pages. What’s black and white and read all over? Not the white pages, which is why regulators have begun granting telecommunications companies the go-ahead to stop mass-printing residential phone books, a musty fixture of Americans’ kitchen counters, refrigerator tops and junk drawers.
0 kommentar(er)
