• Update
• National News
• World News

The days of telephone companies delivering phone books to almost every Colorado household might be numbered under a bill being proposed by a local lawmaker.

Rep. Mark Ferrandino, D-Denver, introduced a bill last week that would prohibit a basic telephone service provider from delivering a white page directory or other paper document in excess of one pound unless the customer requests the delivery. A telephone service provider in violation of the proposed law would have to pay a $50 fine per delivery for the first 100 recipients and $1,000 per recipient for subsequent deliveries. Fines would be capped at $100,000 per year. 

“I think there are still people who use (the phone book) as a viable and important resource,” said Ferrandino. “But people who don’t want it shouldn’t have it delivered unless they request it.”

However, the yellow page industry, which is valued at more than $31 billion worldwide, thinks such a measure is unnecessary. The industry has recently put up a Web site that allows people to opt out of getting a phone book, an initiative they believe goes far enough. 

“We generally favor a self regulatory approach rather than government getting involved in businesses,” said Amy Healy of the Yellow Pages Association.

Ferrandino decided to introduce the bill after hearing concerns from some of his constituents about how they don’t want phone books delivered to their businesses or homes and how they almost always throw them in the recycling bin or trash. And the more he asked around, the more he heard similar responses.

“I was just walking into he Capitol and talking with someone and asked if they used the phone book,” he said. “I looked over and they were using the phone book — they were using it to prop up their computer monitor.”

The rise of the Internet has proven an adversary for traditional phone books because people can now get the information for a business with the click of a button. Additionally, more people are relying on cell phones that have numbers that typically aren’t listed in the white pages.

According to Ferrandino, most telephone companies have no problem with requiring customers to request a white page phone book. Residential white pages aren’t allowed to have advertisements and are put out by the telephone service providers because law requires them to do so.

But the yellow pages, which do allow advertisements, are a revenue source for the phone companies.

For their part, Peter Larmey of Dex, the publishing company for Qwest Communications, said he thinks that most customers and lawmakers will not think a bill like Ferrandino’s is necessary because of the phone company’s new Select Your Dex program that was recently unveiled in Colorado. The program was one of the first by phone book providers to allow people to choose how many and what kind of phone book they want. The program is heavily promoted in the latest phone books issued by Dex.

“We recognize that some people use their phone books, and some people don’t use their phone books … and that’s fine,” Larmey said. “We want to make sure we’re delivering to the customers who do want to receive them and we want to make sure we are delivering what they want to receive.”

The Select Your Dex program is different from Ferrandino’s bill because it still delivers a phone book to a customer unless they say they don’t want it. Larmey believes that requiring people to take an extra step to have their phone books delivered isn’t as good of an option as requiring people to choose how many and what kind of phone book they would like. Healey added that 85 percent of adults use yellow pages over course of year, making the phone book industry’s approach more logical.

“We don’t believe that it makes sense for 85 percent of people to have to do something versus maybe the 15 percent who don’t want it,” she said.

Add a new comment... Spammers: links do not work and our site gets monitored for spam daily and your comments will be removed -- please do not spam our site!

Your Name:

Your Email:

Title:

Comments:

Please copy the characters from this image into the box below. All characters are either numbers 1-9 (not zero) or letters (upper and lowercase). If you cannot read this image, you can click it to try a different image (most browsers). Otherwise, submit the page anyway and try again.

Image Text: