Talk:Telephone directory

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Telephone directories have been with us for a long time. What was their original purpose and has it changed overtime and has it been achieved?Charlee1 06:31, 29 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Added Feist v. Rural, which is a really important fact for anyone writing an open-source encyclopedia.

I've added a bit about reverse directory lookups being illegal in the UK, but now I'm not certain that's actually the case - it may just be prohibited by the phone companies themselves. Anybody know the exact position? I'll do a bit more research myself shortly. sjorford →•← 15:06, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I called the Swedish directory assistance provided by the Swedish Eniro directory company, and asked them to give me the name and address for a Northern Ireland phone number I had. They did give this information. But then, this was in Sweden, not in the UK, but it was a UK phone number. So perhaps people also in the UK can get reverse directory information by calling a directory assistance company in another country!

Jpalme 18:32, 14 November 2007 (UTC) /Jacob Palme[reply]

The article used to have dozens of links to online telephone directories. They were all recently deleted. I agree with that, but the wholesale deletion took out one possibly useful link that was mixed in with them: the link to an image of the First Telephone Book. It's against Wikipedia policy for me to reinstate that link, because it's on my own website. If anyone else agrees that it's worth including, please do so. Gwil 22:59, 15 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I agree. If someone does add links to actual free services, please include Canada and other countries you may find.Canoe1967 (talk) 16:57, 26 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I found two, tested as working for free, and added links.Canoe1967 (talk) 18:07, 26 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

This may be handy to add, if tested as free- http://www.phonebookoftheworld.com/

http://www.whitepages.com/ and http://www.whitepages.ca/ , both tested as free by looking up myself, friends, and relatives.Canoe1967 (talk) 18:51, 26 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

It seems someone has removed the external links again. I am going to the the ones we reached consensus on back again. Please do not revert again without consensus.--Canoe1967 (talk) 18:29, 17 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

• The one link remaining has a list of services. I don't think we need any more.--Canoe1967 (talk) 20:11, 17 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The following paragraph is not completely correct, "Under current rules and practices, cell phone and Voice over IP listings are not included in telephone directories. Efforts to create cellular directories have met stiff opposition from several fronts, including a significant percentage of subscribers who seek to avoid telemarketers." in Australia "cell phones" (i used quotation marks because we call them mobile phones) are listed in the phone book i was going to edit myself but I'm unaware of whether these numbers are included in other countries phone books. Cheers

This has to do with the fact that the United States invented mobile phone technology first, so American subscribers ended up subsidizing a HUGE amount of the original research & development and network buildout back in the 1970s and 1980s. If I remember correctly, as part of the incredibly complex system of compromises that were made in figuring out who would pay for all that, one of the rules is that American cell phone subscribers pay for both inbound and outbound calls. This is still the case today, even though it is very strange since Americans usually don't pay for inbound calls anywhere else in the PSTN (public switched telephone network).

As a result, cell phone subscribers in the United States are generally not listed in phone books, and very few telemarketers attempt to build lists of them (or they purge known cell phone numbers from their lists). This is because a telemarketer who starts routinely calling a large number of cell pphone users would (1) cause all their phone bills to start going up and (2) run the risk of causing all kinds of accidents if people pick up their phones in inconvenient situations (like driving). Apart from the obvious bad public relations, us Americans also have very liberal class action statutes which in turn would result in any such telemarketer getting hit with a wave of class action lawsuits. So there have only been a few reported cases of telemarketers targeting cell phone numbers (usually small organized crime syndicates that don't know any better). The legitimate operators are smart enough to keep away from cell phones. --Coolcaesar 23:07, 6 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, but, this is a world wide article about telephone directory now the logical thing to would be to change the paragraph to start with, in the United States under currant rules........ The reason I haven't done this myself, is because I'm unaware whether this is just the case in America or whether other countries do the the same. thank you for the information but in this case does not contribute to the original discussion. Cheers

I seem to recall that the option of unlisting phone numbers was not available until the mid-1960s. In the show Mad Men, set in 1960, there's a discussion of the fee for an unlisted number. This seems to be an anachronism to me. NjtoTX 18:52, 25 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

"No consensus"? Really? - Rocket000 20:50, 11 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

If this is a question about a correlation between closes here and at AfD, I'll just point out that I only close move requests as "no consensus" (i.e. failure of the proposal in question to gain consensus) or "move" (i.e. consensus favors the proposal). I don't close things as "no move" (cf. "keep"), because the titles in question are not the only options, and a third, as-yet-unsuggested title could gain consensus in the future. Different people working at RM handle this in different ways, but I can only think of one or two closers who label discussions with "do not move". Dekimasuよ! 04:21, 14 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Got it. Rocket000 (talk) 10:22, 25 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]