WASHINGTON — After years of anonymity, the numbers of most of the nation's mobile phones will be compiled later this year in the first wireless directory.
The database being assembled by the Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Assn. is expected to include about 75% of the 163 million mobile phones in the United States, making looking up a wireless number as easy as dialing 411.
The association is pitching the directory as a boon for real estate agents and other on-the-go professionals who want people to be able to find their mobile numbers.
But privacy advocates, some members of Congress and even a major cellular carrier -- Verizon Wireless -- fear that mobile phones, once immune to telemarketers and e-mail spammers, could become as vulnerable as home telephone lines and computer in-boxes.
"The world of telecommunications continues to change, and every day wireless becomes a more significant part of our world," CTIA President Steve Largent said. "This system will provide consumers an opportunity to opt in, if they choose."
Critics counter that the promise of consumer choice is disingenuous because many cellphone service contracts contain clauses that give permission to publish numbers.
They predict that there will be the kind of spam deluge that already plagues mobile users in Europe and Asia, where full- featured phones are more common than in the United States. Beyond that, it's unclear whether people would be on the hook to pay for unwanted calls and e-mails.
Many mobile phone customers pay for the airtime on incoming calls, e-mails and text messages.
Wireless carriers say they doubt there will be widespread abuse. They point out that most mobile phones come equipped with caller ID, distinctive ring tones, call blocking and other tools to manage unwanted calls. And several carriers say they have made refunds to subscribers who have received unwanted calls.
Even so, "I don't want the world to know my cellphone number," said Rep. Joseph R. Pitts (R-Pa.), who has introduced a bill to prevent wireless phone companies from automatically including customers in the directory without getting their permission and from charging customers if they want unlisted numbers. "This is a big privacy issue."
It's also a big money issue for an industry suffering through brutal price wars. A wireless directory could generate as much as $3 billion a year in fees and additional minutes by 2009, according to a study conducted by consulting firm Zelos Group Inc.
The carriers "are either going to make money by getting lots of people listed in the directory" and charging for its use, "or they they'll make money by charging people not to be in it," said Roger Entner, a wireless analyst for the Yankee Group.
Some people may welcome the directory as a quick way to get numbers for friends.
"The younger audience of students, who have essentially grown up with mobile phones and don't differentiate between them [and] wired phones, may be more receptive because it is their primary means of communications," Forrester Research Inc. analyst Charles Golvin said.
In the years since cellphones burst onto the market, wireless numbers have remained mostly private because call recipients have to pay for airtime and thus have been reluctant to distribute numbers widely.
What's more, 30% of wireless customers change carriers each year, complicating the task of compiling an accurate directory. Until recently, when customers switched carriers, their numbers changed as well, so marketers were reluctant to invest much energy in compiling databases of such nomadic users.
That changed last year when the Federal Communications Commission allowed wireless subscribers to keep their numbers when they switched. The rules also permit subscribers of wired phones to transfer their home or office numbers to cellular phones.
Jim Conway, vice president of government affairs at the Direct Marketing Assn., said some members were already inadvertently calling consumers who had transferred their home numbers to their cellphones.
He said members of the association, the largest trade group for telemarketers, remained sensitive to privacy concerns.
"The last thing you want as a marketer is to call your customer on his cellphone, because it's considered so private and personal," Conway said. "But with people porting home numbers to their cellphone, you can't tell anymore."
Cellphone numbers can be added to the Federal Trade Commission's "do-not-call" list. Many telemarketing operations, though, don't belong to the Direct Marketing Assn., which honors the list. Nor do the most prolific e-mail spammers, some of whom flout anti-spam laws.
"My [phone] already has started to get deluged with spam from pornographers and get-rich-quick schemes, and this directory will only make things worse," said Bob Eagan, president of consulting firm Mobile Competency Inc.
