It has been a fixture on kitchen counters, refrigerator tops and junk drawers for decades. But today, the Yellow Pages is a bit too ubiquitous for some, with phone books published annually in the U.S. outnumbering the population two to one.

While the $17 billion-a-year industry is showing remarkable resilience as other advertising driven businesses suffer, it has become a familiar target in state legislatures, where lawmakers have tried, unsuccessfully so far, to place limits on the distribution of phone books.

The Yellow Pages Association, a trade group, calls 2008 the industry's "most challenging year to date with regard to efforts at the state level to restrict directory publishers' ability to freely deliver phone books."

Recent legislation that would empower residents to opt out of receiving phone books has failed or stalled in at least seven states.

The association has paid outside lobbyists about $50,000 this year to defend it in communities across the country.

Two main points the group tries to get across are that phone books help promote local businesses and that they are made almost entirely from wood scraps and recycled paper.

Some residents in Seattle and other communities in King County, Wash., receive phone books from as many as four publishers, said Tom Watson, a waste prevention specialist for the the region. "There hasn't been a good way to opt out," he said.

Phone book publishers acknowledge that many households and businesses receive more phone directories than they need. But they call it a sign of competition in a healthy business and argue that the marketplace, not the government, should determine the number of phone books distributed.

"The ones that get used will remain, and the ones that don't will go away," said Joe Walsh, president and chief executive officer of YellowBook USA Inc., the nation's largest independent yellow pages publisher, with a circulation of about 128 million phone books in 48 states.

For years, the phone companies dominated the directory business, and published the only phone book available in many markets.

Federal rules enacted in the late 1990s required phone companies to provide listings to independent publishers at a reasonable cost and ignited an explosion of competition.

Why? "Because there's money in those yellow pages," said David Goddard, senior analyst of the Yellow-Pages group for Simba Information, a Stamford, Conn.-based media research company.

Last year, Yellow Pages publishers had revenue of about $16.8 billion.

YellowBook, for example, received $406.1 million in revenue in the three months that ended in June, up 9.3 percent from the same period last year. During the same period, Idearc, Verizon's former yellow pages business that it spun off in 2006, reported that its revenue fell 5.1 percent to $1.5 billion.

While other advertising driven businesses, particularly newspapers and magazines, have been struggling as their readers and advertisers migrate to the Internet, the old fashioned printed copy remains king in the Yellow Pages business.

You would expect the Yellow Page Association to paint a rosy picture. But there is no question that yellow page usage has dropped over 20% in the last five years solely due to the internet. Contrary to some claims, the internet is ahead of yellow pages as far as a directory.

Note the flowing article which is not going the make the Yellow Page folks happy.

More Hotels are Evicting Phone Books Find guests don't use them with smartphones, Internet available

Phone books, like tube TVs, are starting to disappear from hotel rooms.

Omni Hotels, citing environmental concerns, announced Wednesday that it will eliminate phone books in its 45 hotels. The current stock of 30,000 phone books will be recycled, the Irving, Texas based company says.

"We found that no one uses them anymore," spokeswoman Caryn Kboudi says. "They just collect dust and take up drawer space."

While a vast majority of hotels in the USA continue to stock phone books, Omni joins a growing list of hotel chains that are eliminating them to cut down on paper waste and present clutter-free rooms. Hyatt Hotels, Hyatt Place, Kimpton Hotels and several chains operated by Starwood Hotels - Westin, Sheraton, Aloft and Element - no longer carry phone books in their rooms (although they are available at the front desks).

Hilton and Inter-Continental Hotels' Indigo have dropped phone books as "a brand standard," or an item that must be stocked, and left the decision to individual hotel owners.

Omni's Kboudi says travelers mostly use the Internet access on their laptop computers or smartphones such as BlackBerry to obtain local information.

Along with the Bible, phone books have been staples in hotels for years. But citing environmental and cost concerns, the industry has been more aggressive about eliminating certain items and services that may not be needed daily, if at all. Many hotels change bed sheets daily only on request. Logo towels, shoehorns and toilet seat sanitation bands have largely disappeared.

Stephanie Hobbs of Yellow Pages Association says the move will upset many guests. "You have to ask what your customers want, not what's easier for hotels," she says, adding that phone books are referenced 13.4 billion times a year in the USA. "Sometimes it's much quicker than logging on and doing the search online."

Yellow Page usuage is low for many products and services. Please note the following chart: