Survey: one in five US households are cell phone only

Americans continue to cut the landline in favor of wireless telephony. When money is tight, like during our current recession, cutting wired voice services makes a lot of economic sense.

By Chris Foresman | Last updated May 10, 2009

http://arstechnica.com/telecom/news/2009/05/survey-one-in-five-us-households-are-cellphone-only.ars

The latest results from the National Center for Health Statistics’ survey on wireless phone use are in, and they reveal that just over 20 percent of all US households have now cut the wire and exclusively use cell phones for voice communication. That number is up from over 17 percent from the previous survey, and for the first time since the NCHS has been keeping track of wireless phone use, this number exceeds the percentage of households that rely on landline phones only—down to a little over 17 percent.

The NCHS collects this data as part of its twice-yearly National Health Interview Survey. Because phone numbers are collected during the interviews for follow-up questions, NCHS began asking questions about wireless phone use in 2003. The NCHS compiles this data since many telephone-based surveys use only landline numbers, and so potential respondents who rely solely on a cellphone would be left out, causing such a survey’s results to be skewed and unreliable.

Not only has the percentage of wireless-only households exceeded the percentage of landline-only households, but wireless-only households increased 17 percent from the first half of 2008. That’s the largest increase in wireless-only households since NCHS started collecting this data, according to the report. While nearly 60 percent of households use both wireless and landline phone service, one in seven households receive all or most calls via cell phone.