The official local phone book, a reminder of the age when telephones came in any color as long as it was black, is fast fading from the scene.
"In a cell-phone age, white pages directories have become increasingly incomplete, obsolete and of extremely limited utility," Alaska Communications Systems recently told the Regulatory Commission of Alaska, erstwhile regulator of phone books. "Moreover the market has produced a variety of readily available third-party directory options, including both online and paper directories."
Once an indispensable link to the outside world, the phone book has lost its position as the ultimate telephonic search engine. Cellphones, smart or otherwise, and the ever-expanding network of unpublished mobile numbers not cataloged under state regulatory authority and broadband options have changed consumer habits. A national survey in 2014 showed 44 percent of households relied entirely on cellphones, along with a majority of children and youths.
The distribution of the official phone book, once an annual event worthy of note that often produced a news story or two, became lost amid alternatives that did not require flipping pages printed on cheap paper. "Let Your Fingers do the Walking" today and you may never get there.
In 2011, ACS had asked the RCA to allow it to stop sending phone books to all customers in Fairbanks, Anchorage, Kenai and Juneau. A year later, the RCA released "local exchange carriers" from the long-standing requirement that they provide universal distribution. It became an easier decision not only because of the electronic alternatives but also because of the explosion of competing off-brand phone books, some with outdated listings, that had started piling up in driveways and on front steps.
With the revised rule, the official phone company books only went to those who asked for them. A lot of people never asked. In Anchorage, only 5,000 ACS customers out of 120,000 asked for copies of the white pages, the company said.
Soon, those customers who ask will have to look elsewhere for phone numbers or dial for directory assistance. That's because the Alaska Legislature unanimously approved a bill in 2014 that eliminated the authority of the regulatory commission to require local carriers to publish phone books.
In an 11-minute hearing in 2013 and a four-minute hearing in 2014, legislators heard repeated assurances from other legislators that under the legislation, customers who wanted a phone book would still have the option of calling the local phone company and getting one. Rep. Kurt Olson, R-Kenai, and others promoted House Bill 169 as the solution to phone book clutter and the way to bring the regulations "into the 21st century."
"These directories still would be available should a person choose it by contacting their service provider," Olson told the state House. "When they have a new service hooked up, they get a postcard they can fill out and request one time and they get it until they request that they don't get it." In his sponsor statement, Olson said he wanted to end "burdensome requirements to distribute increasingly incomplete and obsolete directories."
Sen. Mike Dunleavy, R-Wasilla, and Sen. Peter Micciche, R-Soldotna, said much the same thing.
"There is still the option; it just doesn't require that every land line in Alaska requires the availability of a telephone book," Micciche said. The phone companies backed the bill but legislators did not ask whether they planned to keep printing directories.
The bill, signed by former Gov. Sean Parnell, says that "the commission may not regulate the production and distribution of telephone directories." The phone companies say that means the commission cannot require them to produce and distribute the white pages.
In response to the new law, the staff of the RCA has proposed draft regulations that would require the phone companies to publish electronic directories on their websites and update them at least every six months. In the legislative hearings, lawmakers discussed unwanted phone books, not online directories.
The phone companies reacted to the draft regulations as if they were on the receiving end of an unwanted telemarketing call -- they said the RCA lacks the jurisdiction to say anything about directories. ACS said the RCA staff "fundamentally misreads" the text of the new law, "which forbids the RCA from regulating directories in any format, not just printed books."
"The statute does not distinguish between paperbound directories and electronic directories, it applies to both," GCI said in a filing May 15. The cost to the carriers of creating and updating electronic listings would outweigh the "limited benefit" to consumers. ACS and GCI said customers can call and pay for directory assistance if they need a number or get it for free at whitepages.com and other sites.
GCI said it does not keep numbers in a way that "can be quickly and easily placed on its website" and that it believes the same is true for other companies. It said that if the RCA wants to make directories available it should set up its own website and ask the carriers to submit the information.
"It would be a relatively simple task for the commission itself to assemble the spreadsheets into a database that could be viewed and searched by consumers on the commission's website," GCI said.
A group of rural phone companies that includes towns from Adak to the North Slope said the history of the bill in Juneau demonstrates "that customers do not desire the continued provision of directories" and that companies have the option of offering phone directories at their discretion.
"If the customers in the carrier's service area demand an annual telephone directory, the carrier will make one available," the rural companies said. "There is no demonstrated need for regulations obligating carriers to maintain a telephone directory that nobody uses or requests."
ACS said the draft regulations from the RCA staff use the term "directory listings" instead of directories, "but that cannot save them from violating the statute."
"'Directories' are nothing more than collections of 'directory listings' and the terms are effectively synonymous," ACS said. Had the Legislature intended that the new law would apply only to printed phone books, it would have written the law that way, it said.
The draft regulations also said that companies would have to provide a directory in an "alternative medium" upon request of a customer. Again, the companies say that is not legal under the new law, which "expressly deprived the commission of its authority to regulate directories," ACS said.
The commission "should remove all references to directories from its existing regulations and close this docket without further action," ACS said May 15. The directory rules were a legacy of the time when phone company monopolies existed, the company said.
In 1978, the Alaska Public Utilities Commission said that telephone books were an important part of telephone service. Yellow pages. which are mainly advertising media, have been unregulated since 1986, which is the main reason there are many competing versions.
The RCA proceeding on the new proposed regulations is R-15-003.