Why is there no White Pages for Cell Phones?

Do you remember how easy it used to be to find someone�s phone number: you would just open up your local white pages and browse by last name until you found the person you were looking for. In case you had a number but didn�t know who it belonged to, you could get a reverse phone book from your local library or police station (later, you could easily get a reverse phone book online).

Times have drastically changed though. First, a lot of people don�t even have landlines anymore. Instead, all of their calls are made from their cell phones. Phonebooks don�t list cell phone numbers so it may be very difficult to find the number of a person you want to contact � or figure out whose number it is that keeps calling you.

There are many reasons why a national cell phonebook doesn�t exist. First, it is the nature of cell phones to be transient. You can�t match an address to a cell phone like you can with a landline. If a person moves to Arizona from Ohio, that person probably won�t bother to change his cell phone number (especially since almost all cell phones get free long distance anyway). Without an address or even a city to match up a phone number to, the potential for confusion gets very high. Just imagine if you want to find a John Smith in a national cell phonebook. You�d have thousands of numbers to sort through!

The real reason that there aren�t cell phonebooks though is simply because people value their privacy. Cell phones came out in a different age than landlines and now people are very reluctant to make their personal information known. Many people even opt out of having their landlines listed in phonebooks, even though the phone companies generally charge a fee for this. It is rather ironic that people are so adamant about the privacy of their cell phone numbers since cell phones are used in public.

Even though there aren�t any public cell phonebooks, there are many private companies which have compiled reverse cell phone directories. There are even many private companies which have massive databases which let you look up cell phone numbers and then match them to online profiles, such as on Facebook, and provide email addresses as well. Because of all the privacy issues surrounding cell phones, there are only reverse cell phone directories and no way to lookup a person�s name and find their cell phone number.

If you have someone�s name and want to find his/her cell phone number, you will probably be out of luck. But, if you get a cell phone number, then the privacy issues are considered void � that person did call you after all. You can then sign up to one of the reverse cell phone directories and for a one-time or monthly fee, can find out who has called you.