A simpler solution is to just encourage the viewer to copy and paste the link into the URL bar of their browser.
1. Which probably should be to
C:\Users\%USERNAME%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Network\Connections\Pbk\_hiddenPbk
2. It's to the "dial-up modem phonebook", not the "phonebook"
Yes - you can link to it directly, but as others have noted - a plugin is required before Firefox or Chrome will automagically translate the borked way Windows does links, and to over-ride the security settings the prevent linking to local file from a web page.
There is a DokuWiki plugin that proposes to enable simpler linking to Windows filesystems -
smblink plugin, and there are two plugins for Firefox:
Local File system links,
Local Link.
With IE it can be done via a system setting (add the DokuWiki to the Trusted Zones), which can be pushed out with AD (but teaching a reader to copy and paste may have more benefits).
Either M$ browser will open the local file link if you paste the link into the URL bar - however you'll need to modify it (see images below) so that it uses file://C:\$blah\ instead of file://///C:\$blah\
