The Phone Book

The 4-1 decision will allow phone companies, market by market, to stop delivering phone books door-to-door provided they ask customers if they want to continue to receive the book.

Customers who say “yes” would continue to receive the directory for three more years, according to the PSC decision.

Additionally, the phone companies would have to opt not to deliver market by market, rather than statewide.

AT&T officials indicated they would first stop delivering in markets that have white pages for residential and business phone numbers that are separate from the Yellow Pages book.

Cities where the white pages and the Yellow Pages book are in the same book would not be affected in the near future.

That means New Orleans would be the first market to lose the white pages from being delivered universally, said PSC Commissioner Jimmy Field, of Baton Rouge.

The debate led to some testy exchanges between the commissioners as well as the regulators and phone company officials.

Campbell complained AT&T refused to reveal how much money the company would save by not printing and distributing the white pages.

“Shutting down a convenience, a necessity in many places and they won’t tell us how much they are going to save,” Campbell said.

I still use the phone book and I want mine.

Axé.


3 thoughts on “The Phone Book

  1. Phone books are rapidly becoming useless as more and more people use cell phones only. My daughters don’t have landlines any more, and they hardly ever phone but prefer texting.

  2. I know that´s the party line, but it´s not universally applicable, especially in poor parts of town where there aren´t computers, or out in the country where the cell towers don´t reach. Also, old people do use the phone book; I thought you thought they deserved consideration.

  3. On the other side of the argument, they do use a lot of paper, and most of them aren’t looked at all and go straight to recycling. Maybe a by request system would be the way to go.

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