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Majority of US Households Now Cellphone-Only, Government Says (networkworld.com)
The National Center for Health Statistics has released a report that says, for the first time in history, U.S. households with landlines are now in the minority. Network World reports: The second 6 months of 2016 was the first time that a majority of American homes had only wireless telephones. Preliminary results from the July-December 2016 National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) indicate that 50.8% of American homes did not have a landline telephone but did have at least one wireless telephone (also known as cellular telephones, cell phones, or mobile phones) -- an increase of 2.5 percentage points since the second 6 months of 2015. Young adults (25-34) and those who rent are most likely to live wireless-only, as 70 percent of that demographic lives with a landline.
I still have a landline. I need it so that when I can't find my cellphone, I can call it and search for the ringing sound.
but it's $40/mo. I've pretty much got to have a cell phone for a variety of reasons. I can't afford to spend money on something as superfluous as a land line. I know I'll be screwed in the event of a disaster but, well, I'm an American. When disaster strikes I'm gonna be screwed no matter what. What's the phrase I used to use? "My safety net is made of razor wire"...
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I am 37 and the last time I had a land line was at my parents house when I moved out in 1999, so its 18 years for me and everyone I know with no POTS, its just downhill from there
hell even my parents house is VOIP though the cable company
I have adsl internet so I figure I might as well pay a little extra for a landline so I have somewhere to plug in my cool old bakelite rotary dial phone. To be honest though if this were a purely financial decision I wouldn't bother: I just happen to appreciate vintage tech.
The only phone number I remember anymore is my parents' landline number...from 25 years ago. They don't have a landline anymore.
Would like smartphone: yes.
Would like surveillance device: no.
Of course, it is — the costs of the infrastructure are largely fixed. It (almost) does not matter, whether the network is used by 100 or 100000 people. So, as the number of users dwindles, the costs born by the remaining users go up.
Watching some old cartoons the other day, I had to explain to my older kid, what "payphone" used to be... The younger one may need the same explanation for a "landline".
Seriously, if you told someone, you "left your phone at home" in the 1980ies (or even early 90ies), they would've thought, you are crazy... Is not technology wonderful?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Pretty sure in 1800, the majority of U.S. households did not own a landline telephone.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
There should be at least one person to actually use the cell phones.
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But it's required with our DSL service. It is never used and I have the ringer turned off so telemarketers can't annoy. We only have one option for broadband (low end - not really considered broadband, speed wise). We have the internet package only even. (and still get the phone tied in) Thanks, TDS.
In other news, the majority of US households are stupid consumeroids that will do whatever the TV tells them.
How many of those mobile phones are used mostly for voice communications?
Voip and cell phones don't work for this.
My "landline" is literally free, since it's VOIP. It only cost me a bit to activate the line but since then it's been free with an actual number that I can make and receive calls from anywhere on earth. In fact, I can call the other side of the country, free of charge, while my old provider charged me an arm and a leg to do so, every minutes.
Can you imagine the amount of copper theft, if thieves knew that a lot of those old copper trunk lines have for the most part been abandoned? Yeah, some old alarm systems and a few older landline phones, but most POTS phones are long gone, leaving most of the copper just hanging there. I know one of the trunk lines in my town is abandoned, because at&t doesn't even bother pumping the liquid nitrogen into the line to dry out the moisture like they use to. They kept a tank on that line for over 15 years but last year they took it off, a few years after they buried fiber in the same footprint under the ground.
Young adults (25-34) and those who rent are most likely to live wireless-only, as 70 percent of that demographic lives with a landline.
If 70 percent of any demographic lives with landline phone service, how can they be most likely to be without landline phone service? Interesting use of statistics, I think.
Does VOIP count?
I have a business VOIP Line.
I've converted my inlaws to a VOIP line just this week. Their landline was $45/mo (with tax in). The VOIP line I'm expecting to be less than $10/mo based on their previous monthly average usage. $3/mo for the DID and around 500-700 minutes at $0.01 per minute.
It doesn't cost very much (mine is $20/mo), it's a redundant method of being contacted that works even when the power is out, and the call quality is much, much better than my cell phone (weak service area). And you have a phone number that you can give out to people that doesn't hit your cell phone.
I use my cell phone for work. It's critical for that. I don't need people spamming me. If you spam my landline? Well, for starters, it doesn't take texts, so those fall into the bit bucket. They almost never leave a message, so I don't even have to go to the tiny trouble of deleting those. Srsly, young people, get a good-quality cordless phone system with answering machine. Hook it up to VOIP if you want (insanely cheap; the last VOIP service I used was something like $3/mo for the number and 1 cent per minute for outgoing calls), or get something with a little more redundancy. When you do make a call, you'll find it much more pleasant. Heck, get a Panasonic with Link2Cell even if you don't have another line - it's just so much nicer to use a real phone to make calls when you need to.
Mostly just text messages here, not sure the last time I did voice calls, if it comes to that I just meet face to face but usually too busy or straight avoiding the phone altogether and answer text when there is a lull. Async communication just works better.
and you get dependable 911 service too
I pay about $5/mo per cell line in landline tax on my cellphone bill.
From the survey:
Landline = "at least one phone inside your home that is
currently working and is not a cell phone.â
This includes a phone via cable internet.
So not POTS. POTS has probably already been a minority for years.
A landline phone is still useful if you're asked for a phone number (e.g., in an online form). You give them the phone number of your landline - but you never answer that landline phone. Instead, make all incoming landline calls go to an answering machine (that you check every few days, just in case you get a useful call).
Meanwhile, use your cell phone for all 'real' calls.
The drawback of doing this is that you have to pay for the landline - but that's only ~$20-something/month in the US.
Pretty interesting that this drop under 50% mark happens this late...
In Finland (granted, an extreme example) they dropped under 50% around 2005-2006, current percentage being around 7,5% (includes operator provided VoIP as well - if counting POTS only it is somewhat lower).
The standard answer that USA is so large and sparsely populated doesn't apply here, as proving mobile connectivity is much cheaper than maintaining POTS network.
I'm about to turn 40 and my girlfriend is about to turn 50, so I think we're in the "old farts that probably still have a landline" demographic.
I have an invention that can solve that problem. It's a smartphone case with a cord that attaches to the wall, so you'll never loose your phone again. Patent pending.
I kept my landline for years because my kids were old enough to stay at home alone sometimes, but didn't yet have their own phones. I then ported my number to google voice and use an Obi to connect my old handset to it. I pay $0 each month now, but I have no 911 service. I did redirect 911 to my local non-emergency call center, who are the people who answer 911 anyway just at a higher priority.
At this point I rarely pick that line up, unless it's a delivery or something, everyone I care about uses my cell number.
Although it might be growing in popularity to become a "cord cutter" (in terms of phones) many people forget: Some loan companies (especially mortgages) require the recipient to have a land line. In the event of a natural disaster a land line might be more reliable than a cell phone. Cell towers can be taken out while phone lines are buried. Even when your power is out, you might still be able to make a land-line call because their system is powered separately.
There was a minority of households having landlines from 1876-19xx. Sorry, couldn't find the number.
Ok, I give up, why you?
Most households now do not have a landline ... and the rest wish they didn't, but are forced to take one because it's included in Triple Play "bundles" and it actually costs more to NOT have it.
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A landline that has been deactivated will usually be attached to a limited dial tone that can only be used to dial 911 (or to order telephone service). So if you have the opportunity to abandon a landline, consider it a free emergency phone.
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Anybody want to bet with the current orgy of selling citizens to corps that the laws making it illegal to junk call cellphones will be repealed soon?
I sure wish an acronym used three times would have spelled it out at least once. You know, for those of us not in the telcom, (I mean telecommunications) industry.
Sigh, I guess we're all in our own little heads this morning aren't we?
"Plain old telephone service"
Time for the FCC to jump in and regulate the cell industry. Payback for all the smoke-and-mirrors they've played on consumers all these years. Too bad!
This is a skewed number. For example, AT&T no longer offers POTS phone lines in SC. You can only get a "landline" from AT&T via their U-Verse service, which is IP based. These lines do not count as "landlines" per government statistics.
That said, I haven't had a true POTS landline in about 7 years.
I wonder how many people are like me. For years I had no home phone. They I signed up for Charter (now Spectrum) Internet and Cable service. I wound up having to let them give me a landline or else I would have had to pay a higher price. I don't use the landline. In fact, I tried to use it, and received a large number of spam calls from...Charter! They were trying to collect money from the previous owner of the phone number they gave me. There was no way to convince them that I am the sad new recipient of the number, and not the old person they took it away from. Weird! So I am probably counted among Land Line users even though I didn't want it and they forced me not to actually use it by spam calling me. 'Murica!
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I had no idea there was anywhere *near* 50% of homes that still had a landline in 2017. That is insane to me. I thought we finally gave up on them a decade ago or so. Are they including VoIP as well? I hope this means we can finally end any and all subsidies given to communication companies for landlines. There is simply no need for them, anymore. Honestly, I'd be fine if the government subsidized some kind of VoIP device for those remaining senior citizen luddites who refuse to adapt to the modern world rather than allow this antiquated technology continue. It must cost us a fortune to maintain all those lines.
Sorry, but you'll pry my landline out of my cold dead fingers. I imagine those that are cell-only are a mix of spoiled urban dwellers combined with idiotic rural folks who probably also see smoke detectors, fire extinguishers, and first-aid kits as wastes of money too. If they could save $1000 on their car and not get seatbelts, they'd probably do that too.
So here's a reality check for all of you folks living in your urban distortion bubble: cell phones are unreliable for the majority of the country that aren't cities. Power goes out, cell phone reception is weak often on a good day, and also prone to going out from weather, power outages, and other random acts of nature and human stupidity. When the closest hospital is 30 mins away and the police might be the same, the last thing you want is your safety to be at the whim of a technology as fickle and fragile as cell phones. Our land line never goes out. Ever. The power was out for days due to Irene but the land line still worked and was a critical lifeline to the outside world. Batteries and generators kept the computing equipment working for the internet connection (which runs over the phone line: DSL). In fact, we have zero cell phone reception without our landline.. which provides the DSL which then allows the microcell to connect. Since you've got the copper loop already live for the DSL, the few bucks more per month to have dialtone enabled on it is well worth the investment. Cable internet? A joke... goes down multiple times a week, unreliable and the cable company are a bunch of incompetent crooks who can't fix something to save their lives and will charge you through the ass for it regardless. So I pay less than cable and get 50/25 MBit DSL which is rock solid.
So yeah, while all the young idiots are bitching because the battery backups on the cell towers died again from the latest storm-triggered power outage, I'll be cozy and rocking on my landline again thank you. Happens many times a year, in all those places that aren't cities... you know, most of the area of the USA.
I finally am cellphone-only after a decade of my internet provider refusing to provide internet service unless I had a phone line.
....at a cost of $30 for the phone line.
...now if I could just figure out how to lease a strand of all that fiber that runs past my house to Seattle, I'd throw up a wireless network and start serving my neighbors...
I know what you're thinking, DSL requires a phone line, right? Nope. They provide fiber to the home, but they won't provision it unless you also get their VoIP service because (they claim) of some FCC requirement.
It made their base package:
$60/mo for 5 down/1 up plus $30 for a phone line that isn't connected to anything.
The total cost with taxes and stuff was around $105/mo.
Their high-end package was $250/mo for 1gbit/1gbit, but after running lots of performance tests they were usually only able to provide about 250mbit/500mbit.
Their answer was "well, sometimes during peak usage you might not be able to get the full 1gbit.
Yeah...using a bit of linux scripting, I ran a speed test every 5 minutes for a week. 95th percentile was about 250mbit and their highest was 330mbit.
They finally dropped the VoIP requirement about a month ago.
There's no place like
This figure goes hand in hand with the recent study that showed more people accessing the net with android over windows.
Google has said they will monetize your calling records to advertisers and share your date with third parties. So your call to the STD clinic or Bishop is now data for them to munch on.
Google regularly shares information with affiliates, subsidiaries and other third parties. Although the Google Voice Privacy Policy might lead one to believe otherwise, the general Google Privacy policy applies to the sharing of private data gathered by the Google Voice system. This is true of many private companies that have access to even a small amount of your private data and is difficult to avoid.
Another unwanted but expected intrusion is in the inability to wipe your data history. Although you can delete data from your active accounts, your data is likely to be backed up somewhere permanently. Unlike data stored on your own hard drive, which might also be “deleted” but still accessible, you have no access to Google’s data storage to truly wipe out any record of the data like you could on your own hard drive.
The ugliest part is the increased data mining and profiling power that Google will have. This is increasingly more commonplace and difficult to avoid in any area of life. With the power over so many aspects of a user’s communications, if one isn’t careful, a very detailed profile of you can be built that identifies you, even if you never use your real name in any form in your communications. One must be very conscious to avoid this kind of intrusion.