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Fewer fingers walking the Yellow Pages

By BILL VIRGIN, P-I COLUMNIST

|Updated

Getting in just before the door closes on 2007, here's one more edition of "spot the generational differences."

You need to find a phone number and are advised that a telephone directory is the best way to do so. Your reaction is:

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1) I'll be looking it up in a paper directory, presuming the phone company still bothers to print and deliver them. They're far faster than the alternative, and for business listings they're far easier to scan and evaluate options and locations.

2) Ditch the paper book, dude. For individuals they're increasingly worthless because of the number of unlisted numbers. For businesses, I can use an online directory that includes fast links to maps and the company's own Web site for the latest information.

3) I'll be asking a friend of a friend if they know. Most of the numbers I want to call are cell phones, and those numbers aren't listed in a directory.

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4) What's a directory?

The latest musings about paper telephone directories were prompted by recent scramblings around office and home to find the latest White Pages directory. Unsuccessful forays for same inspired dark suspicions that perhaps the phone companies were trying to slip out of the directory business and hoping no one would notice.

A check with R.H. Donnelley, which publishes phone directories for Qwest, reveals that in fact the company is cutting back.

Some areas south of Seattle, for example, used to receive a single South King County volume that included residential and business White Pages and the Yellow Pages; they'd also receive the Seattle White Pages and a separate Seattle Yellow Pages book.

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Not anymore.

Said Donnelley spokesman Peter Larmey via e-mail, "Households throughout King County now receive just one volume of residential White Pages when their primary local directory is delivered.

"For example, Seattle households receive the Seattle Residential White Pages, same as before. In Bellevue, households receive the residential White Pages that's bound together with the business listings and Yellow Pages in the Greater Eastside directory; they do not receive a second volume of Seattle residential White Pages. In Kent, households receive the residential White Pages that's bound together with the business listings and Yellow Pages in the South King County directory; they do not receive a second volume of Seattle Residential White Pages."

Donnelley and Qwest have also changed the configuration of the Seattle books. Instead of a White Pages volume that combined residential and business listings, and a second Yellow Pages volume, the White Pages business listings have been combined with the Yellow Pages, leaving a second White Pages book with residential listings only.

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Larmey says the moves are part of an overall plan to reduce redundancy in directory content as well as the amount of paper consumed. "We're also aware that consumers are relying more and more on online directories such as DexKnows.com to receive their information, including business and residential listings, detailed business information (ratings and reviews and video, for example) and more," he said.

Washington requires that every local-exchange company (such as Qwest and Verizon) "must ensure that a telephone directory is regularly published for each local exchange it serves," and must provide a directory of that local exchange area to each customer within it. The regs also specify consumer information that must be included.

Washington also requires that pay phone providers (there's another rapidly vanishing feature of the telecom landscape) furnish a current printed phone directory each year at each location.

As Utilities and Transportation Commission spokeswoman Marilyn Meehan noted in an e-mail, "There is a large segment of the population, especially baby boomers, senior citizens and those without computers, who expect a printed copy of their new phone book every year from their local telephone company."

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Count this columnist as a member of that segment who expects and uses a paper directory -- all the limitations notwithstanding.

And they are considerable. Advocates of online directories are correct that the paper book is outdated the instant it hits the doorstep; the business with the splashy ad in the latest Yellow Pages may be out of business in three months. Between those whose numbers are unlisted and those who have gone purely wireless, residential listings are vastly incomplete.

The cause of the paper directory hasn't been helped by the proliferation of off-brand and usually useless Yellow Page directories. There's a great business case to be written about how the power of one of America's most recognizable brands, the Yellow Pages (which was never trademarked, making the name available to anyone) was diluted and diminished.

So why cling to the paper directory? For some of us, business listings are far faster and easier to scan, sort and compare in a paper version than through clunky online services.

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But that may be a generational thing. Those who grow up in a wireless phone, Internet-info age may regard the paper directory as an obsolete relic, if they think of it at all.

The more they ignore the paper directory, the easier it becomes for phone companies to argue that having an online directory is as good as a home-delivered paper book in fulfilling that requirement to provide directories to customers.

Which may be just fine with most customers. If it's not, they'd better start shouting about it. Otherwise, the paper directory may achieve the same essential status in the telecommunications system as the rotary-dial telephone.

By BILL VIRGIN
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