Landlines Disappearing
A recent survey conducted by the National Center for Health Statistics confirms what everyone already knew: landline telephones are slowly becoming a vestige of the past. The survey covered the first half of 2007 and found that 13.6% of households during that time had at least one wireless phone and no landline phone.
During the January – June 2007 period, 12.6% of U.S. adults only used wireless phones, compared to 11.8% during the previous period (the second half of 2006). During the first half of 2005, this figure was just 6.7%.
For U.S. children, 11.9% lived in households that only utilized mobile phones during the first half of 2007, compared to 11.6% during the second half of 2006. This figure was at 5.8% during the first half of 2005.
Younger U.S. adults are more likely to be mobile phone-only users. During the first half of last year, 27.9% of adults between the ages of 18-24 were mobile-only, while 30.6% of adults between 25-29 were also mobile-only. Males were also more likely to have only mobile phone service (13.8%) compared to females (11.5%).
These figures paint a slightly rosier picture for the number of mobile-only phone users compared to a Harris Interactive poll released in June 2007, which indicated that 11% of households of U.S. Internet users used mobile phones only. Sixty-three percent of these households used multiple lines, while 18% used only landline phone service.
