Slashdot Mirror
Canada's Largest Cities Seeing the End of the Phone Book
innocent_white_lamb writes "Telephone directories are available on the Internet, and many phones even store their own directories. There is less and less demand for a printed phone book, so residential phone books will no longer be printed and delivered in Canada's seven largest cities. Do we now expect everyone's grandma to look up phone numbers on the Internet? Of course, the Yellow Pages, where businesses pay for a listing, will still be delivered."
I over heard in the local telecom office here in Pune, India there will be no more printed directory here either. The last one we got is three years old.
BTW the directories in Indian cities were distributed only by the Monopoly telecom BSNL and its Big cities cousin MTNL. With rise of private players in wired as well as the exploded mobile segment in India, the directories were not much of the use anyway. This just puts the death nail in them.
BAIN http://www.devslashzero.com
At my last rent house local telco's were in competition with each other to have the "defacto" phone book. When stacked together the phone books I got in a 1 year period were 2 ft tall. The phone companies kept trying to 1 up each other. I never actually used one of them - except one of them had a nice local map tucked in the front. I pulled it out, circled where I lived for someone who was going to visit later and handed it over.
Why should I have to pay for trash pickup if they do free trash delivery?
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What they're doing now still lets grandma get one every year, she just has to ask for it. They're just not delivering on directly to everyone else's recycling box anymore.
But directory will be exactly the same, just not in paper form.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
They're doing a similar kind of thing here in Germany for some years already, you only get a postcard telling you there's a new phonebook and yellowpages available and where to get it. If you want one, you can collect any number you need at the next post office, certain gas stations and in bigger cities at the central railroad station.
A state legislator introduced a bill to require telcos to change "receives a phone book" from "yes" to "must request it". By the time it came up for a vote, some of those who'd previously supported the bill now were against it--even one of the bill's authors. Yellow Pages advertising is big business here in the US. Regional telcos are grabbing at anything they can to "monetize" and the ad revenue in phone books was a cash cow. I get a "real" phone book published by the telco and one that's purely ad driven that I toss into recycling straightaway. Once the Greens start slapping these senators at the ballot box, stuff like the phone book "opt-in" thing is going to have to go from city to city. Palo Alto and some neighboring cities have already banned plastic grocery bags, styrofoam cups, and containers. Telling the local phone company that they have to ask each of their Palo Alto customers if they want a phone book is just another issue. Unfortunately, yelling at a city councilman at a council meeting for caving to a lobbyist is easier than at a state senator at a local town hall meeting. And it gets more press.
5 million trees are used to print the US phone book, the stuff costs a fortune and it has to go the way of the newspapers and dodos.
http://www.banthephonebook.org/
In europe, nobody is using landlines anymore, but in U.S (and Canada?) where mobile networks are still pretty hard to reach at some areas and are unrealiable, it's very common to still use landlines. Only couple of years ago, it was said that only poor people give up land lines in U.S.
It costs money to receive a cell call
Only in the USA. ...
FAIL... Canada also
As an apartment dweller, I've observed a monstrous pile of phone books get delivered to the mail room every year. It's always the same thing - after a few weeks, about 10% of the books are actually taken, and the rest get recycled. I'm very glad to see someone finally realize how ridiculous and wasteful this really is.