Verizon's pay-for-call

Here's a post by Charlene Li providing some great insight on Verizon's Superpages.com's upcoming "Pay-For-Call" (PFC) service. She outlines three features of the service, which I think are interesting:

1. Local searches will have the more relevant, local advertisers, which will allow them to carry local phone #s rather than toll-free numbers.
2. They plan to have generic category ads in their print yellow pages routing phone calls placed to the listed number to the highest PFC bidder.
3. They plan to convert clicks from text ads (such as Google's ads on their local search) to a landing page listing the phone number in an effort to convert the click to a phone call.

This service seems like it would be a great boon for localized businesses as a way to pay money (possibly only a couple of dollars) for phone calls from potential customers and only ones that are definitely interested (well...interested enough to pick up the phone).

I'm not very familiar with pay-per-call technology, but I think that this initiative from Superpages.com as well as others like it (Ingenio) could potentially have a big impact on the local search and pay-per-click landscapes. When you consider that when I search for something like hair salon in my hometown, the sponsored links that appear are for either businesses that are 50 miles away, or national advertisers, I'd say this space as a lot of room for improvement.