Verizon recently announced that they would no longer be printing and delivering phone books in the state of New York. This comes after the company was approved by the New York State Public Service Commission.
According to Buffalo News, the telecommunications company dropped its residential phone listing services six years ago. While books will still be available for those who request them, the books themselves will no longer be sent to each customer.
Due to advancements in technology and the power of the Internet, most consumers use their smartphones or other devices to find the information they need. Consequently, the use of phone books has become obsolete.
Considering that Internet telephony accounts for an average of 3.9 hours of extra productivity time for most employees, Verizon’s decision was a long time coming.
“All of the information is entirely online, which is where the vast majority of people go nowadays anyway,” said Ray McConville, a Verizon spokesman. “It saves money. It saves a tremendous amount of paper.”
Based on the results of a survey issued by the Local Search Association, only six percent of people claimed to use phone books as a telephone listing source. The company began sending phone books only to customers who requested them in 2010. Since then, the company says that less than one percent of American households want a printed phone book.
Part of the reason these homes don’t want the printed books is because they do not include listings that no longer have a landline or have phone service through a cable provider. For this reason, many of the listings do not have accurate information, Many resort to electronic forms of searching for the information they need.
“There is no longer a need to mandate the blanket distribution of printed directories,” said Audrey Zibelman, the PSC chairwoman, in a statement. “Aside from not harming consumers’ ability to receive directory information, we now can avoid the unnecessary printing of paper directories, an environmentally sound option.”
