Has Technology Made Phonebooks Obsolete?

Here in Massachusetts it's phonebook season. That's when the 5-pound Yellow Book directories are plopped in front of hundreds of thousands of Boston doorsteps. For many receiving these hulking phonebooks, myself included, it feels more like a guilty burden.

Guilt comes from feeling the wasteful shame of moving the Yellow Book from doorstep to recycle bin without even taking the phonebook out of the heavy plastic bag it came in. Guilt comes from the feeling of pure waste of paper, and the waste of gas it took deliver the phonebooks, the wasted manufacturing costs involved in making the phonebook, and the clutter phonebooks make in landfills.

Can Tech Tools Replace a Phonebook?

Call me in the vanguard (but I don't think I am) but technology has long ago replaced my phonebook.

For years now I rely on Google or services such as Switchboard.com to find a local business or residential phone numbers and address. When I get in a pinch I call either of the free phone-based directory services Google's GOOG-411 or Microsoft's Live Search 411. And worst case scenario I suck it up and call 411 and get charged a small fortune for directory service. Often time no one can help me because I'm looking for a friend's cell phone number - something for which there are no public directories for.

Bill Gates even sides with me. He predicted last year "Yellow Page usage among people, say, below 50, will drop to zero -- near zero -- over the next five years."

Phonebook Haters Unite

I learned Gates and I are not alone in our anti-phonebook sentiments. This week here in Massachusetts Boston city councilor began pushing to have phonebooks banned in Boston. Councilor Salvatore LaMattina is proposing an ordinance that would ban the distribution of unsolicited commercial deliveries weighing more than a pound. That would include phonebooks. Violators of the proposed law would be subject to fines of $300 per violation.

LaMattina told The Boston Globe, "The taxpayers end up paying for this stuff to be carted off and recycled."

According to the nonprofit trade group Yellow Pages Association 615 million directories were printed in the United States. That's a lot of dead trees. Although the Yellow Page Association says its members make phonebooks using 40 percent of recycled material.

Still according to number crunching for every 400 individual five-pound phonebooks made 17 to 20 trees must be cut down.

Are You a Phonebook-Hating Techno-Snob Like Me?

According to the Yellow Pages Association I am in the minority. Approximately 87 percent of the U.S. population used the print Yellow Pages in 2007, according to the association.

Is the Yellow Pages Association counting those who use their phonebook as a doorstop? Maybe their also counting the hundreds of people who have posted videos to YouTube of themselves ripping phonebooks in half as well.

I'm not advocating the eradication of phonebooks ? or ripping one in-half. Instead I support places such as Boston's neighboring city Cambridge which is also looking to crack down on unwanted phonebooks in a different way. Last week the Cambridge City Council passed a proposal that would allow citizens to opt-out of receiving phonebooks delivered to their doorsteps.

In other states such as North Carolina, Minnesota, Maine, New Mexico, and New York the state legislatures have also considered allowing their residents to opt-out of receiving phonebooks. Resistance for the opt-out option is coming from (guess who) the Yellow Pages Association. There are other hitches to the plan. For example local and state regulatory requirements differ, but many require telcos to publish yearly residential listings. Still, there are no regulatory requirements that force businesses to deliver yellow page directories.

Kicking the Yellow Page Print Habit

According to a fantastic article on Slate by Paul Collins titled "The Book of the Undead" the yellow page phonebook business is a very profitable one. Based on the distribution of 615 million yellow pages in the U.S. in 2007, Collins estimates, all yellow book directories generated revenues of $13.9 billion or $22 in revenue per copy.

Technology has never been better suited to help save trees, landfills from becoming choked with phonebooks, and streets from being cluttered with dead phone books.

As phone directory analyst Michael Taylor of The Kelsey Group points out in a blog post there are some enlightened phone companies. AT&T has announced an initiative in North Carolina to stop publishing its White Pages directories in parts of North Carolina in favor of Web-based or distributing CD-ROMs to residents that contain listing data.

Give it time and the Internet, GPS mapping technology, mobile search, and phone-based 411 services might just kill off the phonebook business - no new laws required. Shares in companies that publish yellow page directories are significantly down and the Yellow Pages Association says its members' online directory 411 services are booming while its printed side of the business remains flat.