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Verizon to 86 White Pages?

By

Jaya Saxena

Published May 8, 2010

Modified May 8, 2010

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I don't need anything...except this phone book.

 

By

Jaya Saxena

Published May 8, 2010

Modified May 8, 2010

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Navin R. Johnson's overwhelming joy over his "spontaneous publicity" on page 73 of the phone book may fall on deaf ears to children of the digital age now that Verizon is planning to stop production of the residential White Pages. The state's dominant local phone company asked legislators yesterday to allow them to end their automatic delivery of the directory, which could save up to 5,000 tons of paper a year. One building concierge said, “We end up throwing them away. Everyone goes online anyways."

A Gallup poll from 2008 said that only one in nine residents still uses the White Pages. A majority now call directory assistance or look up numbers on the internet. AT&T has already received permission to stop automatically distributing the directories in Florida, Ohio, Oklahoma and Georgia, but withdrew a proposal in North Carolina after the elderly complained they could lose contact with friends if they did not receive updated books every year.

The new proposal would hault automatic delivery, but already New Yorkers can notify the company if they don't want the White Pages delivered. SuperMedia executive Scott W. Klein said, “We made a conscious decision to make it easy for people to not get the book. We only want to create and provide products that people want to use." SuperMedia would still produce the Yellow Pages, which make money off companies wanting to be displayed more prominently.

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