White pages make comeback in CenturyLink’s Spokane phone books

When CenturyLink’s official phone book arrived on the doorsteps of Spokane homes and businesses in 2014, there were many angry customers.

The book, printed by Dex Media under a contract with CenturyLink, did not include residential white pages for the first time.

There were so many complaints that when Dex’s Spokane phone book arrived on front porches this fall, residential white pages were back.

“The feedback from the advertisers and the marketplace was they wanted their numbers back in,” said John Gregory, vice president of directories for Dex Media. “We’re OK with that.”

The rise of online phone directories, along with the decreasing use of residential landlines, has led to declining use of printed phone books. In many urban markets, residential white pages have been removed.

“We’ve been taking them out pretty much throughout the United States,” Gregory said.

Removing residential listings in Washington became possible in 2013, after the Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission ruled that phone companies no longer had to distribute phone books to all customers.

Gregory said only about a dozen markets nationwide have reacted so negatively to Dex’s decision to delete the residential listings that Dex reversed course and put them back in newer editions.

“Even though Spokane is a larger market, it kind of acts rural,” Gregory said.

Dex has an online directory, but printed phone books still account for about two-thirds of Dex’s business, Gregory said.

“We’re going to put out a great book as long as the market demands it,” Gregory said.

Despite the white pages’ re-emergence in Spokane, printed phone books still have a limited life span.

“I don’t think Manhattan, New York, will have a book in 10 years, but Manhattan, Kansas, will,” Gregory said. “The last book we will ever deliver will be in Fargo, North Dakota.”

CenturyLink opposed the removal of Washington’s regulation requiring printed phone books in 2013, arguing that many people, especially the poor, don’t have access to online directories.

But most who submitted comments to the commission supported the end of the regulation, including officials representing the city of Seattle and Dex Media. They argued that printing phone books for everyone is environmentally unsound and increasingly unpopular.

The commission still requires phone companies to provide customers with a printed phone book with all phone numbers, including residential listings, but only if requested.

In its comments to the commission in 2013, Dex noted that a deadline was quickly approaching for the printing of its Seattle directory.

“It would be a shameful waste to prolong saturation delivery for yet another year in such a large and environmentally-conscious market,” wrote Brooks E. Harlow, an attorney representing Dex.

Gregory said the Seattle market did not respond negatively to the deletion of its residential white pages.