Phone books will still contain alphabetical business listings and the yellow pages organized by category; residential directories will be available by request.
The 2011-2012 Springfield-Chicopee-Holyoke Area photo book.SPRINGFIELD – From now on, fingers looking for home phone numbers are going to do their walking on a computer keyboard.
Verizon is no longer including residential white-pages listings with most phone books distributed in Massachusetts, said Philip G. Santoro, a Verizon spokesman for Massachusetts.
“People are finding phone numbers online and they seem to prefer it,” he said. “For many years people have said to us they end up in a landfill. This is a statewide initiative.”
Laurie A. Cassidy, executive director of the West Springfield Council on Aging, said some older adults like the familiarity of the phone book. But others have followed the trend and given up their land-line phones for cell phones.
“I guess with technology, everybody has to adapt,” she said.
Phone books will still contain alphabetical business listings and the yellow pages organized by category, Santoro said. Business listings are largely paid advertisements, Santoro said.
Competitor Yellow Book Sales and Distribution Co. hasn’t included residential listings in recent editions of its Springfield book, according to an e-mail from Yellow Book. Yellow Book’s Hampshire and Franklin County edition has had those listings at least in recent years.
Verizon makes residential listings available on its own website www.verizon.com/whitepages. When customers visit the site, there’s a number posted for people to order residential directories if they want a regular old-fashioned. The residential listings are a separate book now.
Customers also may call (800) 888-8448 to get a book with a residential listing or to opt out of the phone-book delivery.
Verizon issues new editions of phone books constantly with each city and town getting its annual update at about the same time each year, Santoro said.
“But those times of year vary from city to city, so we are always putting out new phone books all year long,” Santoro said.
Massachusetts didn’t have state regulations requiring Verizon to supply each residence with a residential directory, Santoro said. But other states had those regulations, so Verizon’s had to do some state-by-state lobbying.