The Case of the Missing White Pages

There’s no white pages for cellphone numbers, and it doesn’t seem likely that there’ll be one soon. A few years ago, the cellphone industry’s main trade group hired a company to assemble such a directory, but the effort collapsed after some carriers lobbied against it and surveys showed a majority of customers didn’t want it. Subsequent efforts have fared little better: Earlier this year, a company called Intelius shuttered an online directory of 90 million mobile numbers amid anger from cellphone users and threats from Verizon. (Intelius — not Intellius, as I had it earlier — still offers a reverse-lookup service, for a fee.)

In backpedaling, Intelius said that “it’s clear the market is still not ready.” But it may never be.

The principal reason there’s no cellphone directory is simple: We don’t want one.
…
Why not? Because in a number of important ways, the cellphone is more of a break with traditional telephone service than it is an evolution of it. And those differences will only become more apparent in the coming years.

Source: Wall Street Journal

This entry was posted on Monday, June 16th, 2008 at 8:43 am and is filed under Access to Information, Privacy, Search News, Social Media, Web 2.0, Wireless Web and Search. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.