Shrinking Size of Phone Books Track Decline of Landline Phones
Jeremy W. Peters writes As Cellphones Multiply, Phone Books Get Slimmer.
People are substituting mobile phones for traditional wired phones. I’ve run into quite a few people who have decided a mobile phone is all they need.
It’s common for college kids and recent graduates to simply never install a wired phone. The phone companies are their own enemies to some extent. High installation fees, and the lack of cheap “buckets” of long distance callings put traditional phone service at a disadvantage compared with mobile phones.
Two things stand in the way of this trend sweeping away wired phones:
* Mobile coverage is spotty at best. My residence does not enjoy consistent, reliable mobile service.
* Phone companies do a pretty good job of bundling high speed internet (DSL) with the wired phone. Most people are not aware you can buy DSL service without having voice phone service.
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At the end of last year, 7.2 percent of American households used only a cellphone, up from just 0.7 percent six years earlier, according to TNS Telecom, a research company.
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In Manhattan, the population in recent years has been growing at an annual rate of about 10,000 people, to about 1.6 million residents now. But the 2007 Verizon White Pages was 142 pages smaller than the 2006 edition. At 1,796 pages of listings, it is the smallest residential phone book for Manhattan since Verizon began publishing them in 2001.
The story is the same in other cities. Phone books in Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, Denver and Phoenix have also been shrinking, even as the populations have grown. And in fast-growing Las Vegas, white page listings grew by a meager 12 pages this year over last.