The End of the Phone Book?

OK. Back in January I wrote about why people really don’t need paper phone books and how continuing to print these phone books is a massive drain on the environment.  Well, it looks as if AT&T is under the same impression and is working tirelessly to rid themselves of the phone book printing burden.

Earlier in the year, AT&T convinced Ohio state regulators to allow them not to print and distribute phone books. (note: for those of you who don’t know, the telephone companies have a legal obligation to print and distribute paper phone books.  Seriously!).  Just this past week, AT&T was successful in convincing the Florida Public Service Commission to do the same thing, all in the name of saving the environment and making our country a greener place.

Now, to be fair, AT&T’s rationale for ending the distribution of phone books isn’t entirely altruistic.  These things cost a ton of money to print and distribute, with some analysts pegging the total costs in the billions of $$$.  So, money is involved and I’m taking a wild guess that most consumers won’t see the benefit of AT&T’s cost savings.  But still, AT&T’s momentum again begs the question.  Why in the world do we need paper phone books?

Let me launch into my personal plug for WhitePages to help answer that question. Three more reasons why you don’t need phone books:

• WhitePages service covers over 90% of the US Adult population and includes more than 200M individuals. We just about have every US resident available to people online. If you have access to the internet, you don’t need a phone book.
• We’ve been expanding our services into cell phones. You can now access our information on all iPhone, Android and BlackBerry phones. Actually, any phone that can access the internet can access our services.
• The paper phone books are all land-line based. That is, they don’t include cell phone numbers or email addresses. With WhitePages Connectory services, not only can you privately add your own listing, but you can find people who otherwise wouldn’t be reachable through that old phone book

And it’s not like people aren’t already using WhitePages. In 2008, our customers performed over 2B searches on WhitePages. That’s the equivalent of $3B in savings had they tried to access that information via 411 services that charge $1.50/call (caveat: this is just a wild guess. Don’t read too much into this number…I’m just trying to make a point).

And for those of you who are wondering what happens to those individuals who are in remote locations and don’t have access to the internet or to a computer, AT&T has proposed a solution. Why not allow those customers to continue to opt-in to receiving the paper phone book? That way, those who absolutely need a paper phone book can continue to receive them but AT&T doesn’t incur the costs of mass-printing and distribution.

This movement is sure to play out over the coming years, but it sure seems that a transformation of traditionally paper-based businesses is among us (think newspapers, phone books, financial statements).

What else is out there?

John