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Across AT&T’s service areas, the company has lobbied heavily for telecommunications deregulation that, among other things, makes the printing and distribution of telephone directories optional. In Alabama, AT&T has filed a request with the state Public Service Commission to end automatic delivery of residential listings, the so-called “White Pages,” to reduce costs.
Because telephone companies earn substantial revenue from advertising in the business listings, the “Yellow Pages” will continue to be printed and dropped on doorsteps across Alabama once a year, whether customers ask for them or not.
AT&T’s filing with the Alabama PSC explains the reasons for stopping the printed residential listings:
The traditional residential white page telephone book no longer provides the same utility it once did. Based on trials AT&T has recently conducted, it appears that the vast majority of customers neither need nor use these often quite large, bound paper directories delivered to their homes each year. AT&T Alabama thus proposes a directory delivery trial whereby AT&T Alabama would initially deliver the AT&T Real Yellow Pages directory in the Mobile market.
In addition to traditional Yellow Pages listings, that directory would also contain the business white page listings, the Government listings, the customer guide information, and other information required under the Commission’s Rules. Also included will be materials informing customers they can receive a printed white pages directory containing residential listings, which will be mailed at no cost to the customer. Customers tend to find their residential listings in today’s marketplace in a manner other than by using the printed white page directories, so publishing largely unused residential white page books is an inefficient use of environmental resources.
If the proposal is approved, AT&T will offer Alabama residents the option of receiving a printed version of the White Pages or a CD-ROM containing the listings mailed to them at no charge.
AT&T’s telephone directories are already online at AT&T’s RealPagesLive website.
The PSC is expected to consider the matter later today.
Other stories of interest:
- Phone Book Nightmares: Frontier & FairPoint Anger Customers Over Policy Changes & Mistakes
- Deregulation + Lack of Competition = Rate Increase for Alabama AT&T Customers
- AT&T: Basic Telephone Service In Death Spiral – Deregulate Us For 21st Century Upgrade
- Auburn, Alabama Approves Knology Application to Build Competing Cable Company
- Past is Prologue: The Great Telephone Strike of 1886, When Bell Tried to Eliminate Flat Rate Pricing
We have both the white pages and the yellow pages in our house. You would have to blow the dust off them to use them. I wondered why they sent them out every year. Now I know. They have to by regulation. This is silly and should be done away with. We go to the internet for our phone numbers.
But with internet overcharging schemes, it will beocme cost prohibiative to look up phone numbers online.
I hate getting these books. I believe we should have the right to opt out of getting them, but that option should also apply to BOTH the yellow and white pages.
Everyone thinks we are cutting down and killing trees its just a crop .We plant more than we cut. This product keeps lots of poeple working.