One in five US homes use cell phone only (no landline). It is clear that wired phone is on the way out.
The CDC’s report on wireless substitution - aka canceling your land line for a cellphone - is out and we discover that one in five U.S. households have cut the cable, an increase of 2.7 percent over six months ago. Another tidbit: one in every seven American homes (14.5%) took all their calls on cellphones despite having a landline.
The report polled 12,597 families for 23,726 adults total - there were 8,635 kids under the age of 18 - which makes it a fairly strong sample size. A few other tidbits:
* More than three in five adults living only with unrelated adult roommates (60.6%) were in households with only wireless telephones. This is the highest prevalence rate among the population subgroups examined.
* Nearly two in five adults renting their home (39.2%) had only wireless telephones. Adults renting their home were more likely than adults owning their home (9.9%) to be living in households with only wireless telephones.
* Men (20.0%) were more likely than women (17.0%) to be living in households with only wireless telephones.
* Adults living in poverty (30.9%) and adults living near poverty (23.8%) were more likely than higher income adults (16.0%) to be living in households with only wireless telephones.
I’m glad to see the Americans are at last catching up with rest of the world.
I’m in Malaysia and I still have a landline which I have hardly used since I got my mobile phone in 1996.
Today I have six registered postpaid cellular lines plus a company cellular number (which makes seven), three prepaid numbers (which I don’t regularly top up), five cellphones, two wireless cellular data modems plus two desktop wireless broadband modems.
I have no wife or kids but let my aunt use one of my six postpaid numbers.
Now that’s a guy who about 15 years ago thought of cellphones as a yuppie toy but it’s interesting how even the people with the lowest income use cellphones.
Hmmm! Perhaps one day, the telcos will figure out how to make having a landline a premium item for the wealthy — just like analogue mechanical watches are premium items compared to cheap digitals.
Comment by Charles F Moreira — May 12, 2009 @ 7:51 am