A not so weighty tome dropped through the letter box today. As announced by BT some time ago, the very final edition of the phone book has arrived.
For those of a slightly older disposition, the phone book represented a mainstay of British life up until the last couple of decades.
For those who have never experienced it, the phone book had everyone’s phone number in your local area, both businesses and residential. It contains the postal address of people as well. As time went by, people grew less willing to have such information made public, moving to having ex-directory numbers. This meant they were removed from the next version of the published book.
Landlines have also fallen out of favour for most people – when someone asks for your number, you give them your mobile. So again, the need for a physical directory waned.
The business numbers section of the book also got replaced – firstly the web (you looked up a company number online or emailed them) – and then by social media and other methods of communication.
Like all companies, BT must have evaluated the cost of preparing phone books, both monetary and environmentally. The mind boggles as to how much paper would have been used to produce these books and then have them delivered to every UK address.
Farewell to the phone book. After more than a century, your time has come.
Leave a Reply