I get 3 phone books each year and I just put them with my recycling trash . I
have a line land phone and I get a lot unknown callers calling at weird hours .
I would love a cell pone but I am not sure I would be able to hear on it
all the time. My family hearing is fine any they have trouble hearing on their cell phones sometime. You could also use the phonebook as a weapon . LOL!
The OP’s question is why? The answer is that nobody can figure out how to make money selling one. I sure wouldn’t pay to buy one. And robodialers don’t need one.
Prior to the invention of telephones there was a similar book published which was a directory of the names and addresses of every(?) resident in a town or city. Would you buy such a thing today with no other contact info in it? Probably not.
The OP may feel that society would be served by a white pages including cellphones. But it’ll only exist if A) some company makes a profit creating it; or B) some government agency decrees that it be created. Neither of those things has happened. Yet.
Usually they were also advised and allowed to not have their address listed as well.
In fact, Comcast is so nice they list you even if you paid them not to. It’s Comcastic!
Nobody sells phone books. They sell advertising space in the phone book, and then foist the books onto everyone else, whether they want them or not. It’s a print media version of a broadcast media business model, except television doesn’t leave paper slowly rotting in your driveway.
nm
OP here. “White pages” means “publicly available directory,” as I corrected my meaning a few posts ago.
I understand OP must abide by his own OP, for gosh sake.
But rather than make feeble and scatter the discussion, and actually post a new OP, behold this new OP hed manqué.
However, discussion and reminiscences of white pages per se are hereby allowed, suitably slotted as drift.
As Derleth said, white pages were subsidized by selling ad space in the Yellow Pages, which were the most highly desired advertising since everybody had free access to it in their homes.
Compiling, correcting, and printing the White Pages had a huge cost for the phone company, which indicates just how profitable the Yellow Pages were. They changed - often significantly - every year, so the costs never went away. They required near-perfect accuracy, too, which they never achieved. Every year some listings got left out and others had incorrect information. IIRC, you didn’t get far if you tried to sue for loss of business or other problems, but it was a huge headache for all concerned.
All this was done locally, which limited the size but more importantly meant that all the information was easily available since the company had a monopoly.
Creating an online database for the customers of any particular company shouldn’t be as hard or as costly as compiling the White Pages. But it also wouldn’t be as useful for people wanting a number. I don’t know what company you use. Wikipedia lists 82 providers currently in operation, including Bug Tussel Wireless. They’d have to agree to merge all their separate listings into one central one and contribute to its upkeep, at a time when thousands of new and changed numbers flood each day.
I don’t see that happening. Too many people won’t want to be listed in the first place. Despite what Carryon said, the national percentage of unlisted numbers was over 25% and over 50% in most large cities. So, huge costs, impossible consolidation, and limited usefulness. Three strikes, and it’s out.
FTR, I think the words “hed manqué” is a first in SD. I, for one, am very proud of that.
And that I finally know what the hell exapno mapcase is.
I have chills running down my back.
But why a duck?
Make that three hard boiled eggs.
Thank you.
Actually, more apropos of thread, “Is my Aunt Minnie there?”
Fact is, the phone book was a great convenience. You wanted to call someone and didn’t know their number? Look it up. Can’t do that now. All the paranoid explanations of why that is must come from younger members who only know the culture of fear and have no sense of what it meant to have a general sense of trust in others. Stalkers? Overwhelmed by spam? Lurking around seeking unsuspecting women? Jeez, kids, your perception of danger is way out of proportion to the reality. Sad.
I was quite proud of the time I actually appeared in the phone book for the first time. It was something of a signal that I was “a grown up.”
As a kid, in a relatively small town, I would also look into the phone book to see who else lived on my street (hmmm G. L. Hickenlooper is 4 houses down…who knew?). The 1980s were simple times…simple times.
Finally, when traveling , it was always fun to see if anyone had your name in a strange town.
Sadly, our youth will never have those pleasures.
This is anecdotal and prices may have varied but my brother had a mobile mechanic business and he used to pay for either a quarter or half page Yellow Pages business listing and it was over $1000 a month! And you couldn’t just get the Yellow Pages ad and then stop paying the monthly fee because if you did they (obviously) shut your business phone line off (which made the ad useless). Back then it worked well for him though, it generated tons of business.
I think not.
Computers have changed everything.
Before computerization, and the wholesale wholesaling of personal data, a White Pages was a good idea. Now, it’s just a guarantee of computer-assisted telephone solicitation.
FWIW, the cell phone companies are desperate to publish this data - they want to sell it to telemarketers. Fortunately, the FCC has resisted their lobby so far.
That puts me in mind of a factoid that I learned back in the late '90s: that federal law prohibits telemarketing calls to call phones. Is this still true? Was it ever true?
I got really pissed when the explosion of the number of cell phones, pagers, and dedicated fax lines necessitated the introduction of area code overlays, and I had to start dialing 1+(area code) just to call the guy next door. I thought they should go ahead and add the new codes, but only use them for non-land lines. Land lines would use the traditional codes, and I could stick with dialing seven digits.