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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
You can use those old rotary dial phones with VoIP adapters, assuming your gateway supports pulse dialing(which most seem to support).
I absolutely *LOVE* the old mechanical ringers on those phones. You can also beat someone over the head with it and STILL be able to call the police afterwards too!
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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I haven't had a landline for a few years, since I ditched AT&T DSL for cable internet, but I kind of miss the "thrill" I got with my first cordless phone, freeing me from the tyranny of the handset being cabled to the phone. Then there were the cool little Uniden 648 handsets that were as small as a cellphone. I miss those days when I didn't even feel a real need to constantly have a phone attached to my body. Even now, about the only real reasons for me to have a cellphone are: 1) as mentioned, landlines w/long-distance are just crazy expensive in comparison to a basic prepaid flip-phone plan, and 2) you pretty much need a cellphone if you break down these days because payphones are basically nonexistent.
My VOIP provider supports FAX.
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.
I haven't had a landline for a few years, since I ditched AT&T DSL for cable internet,
I was using my landline phone to call the cable company to report a complete service outage, and as part of the script this agent actually tried to sell me Comcast Voice. As in, how'd I like to put a few more of my eggs in the Comcast basket?
TV? What TV? I haven't watched TV in 20+ years. Last I checked the Big Three networks were history.
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.
Bundling may seem to reduce your costs overall, but it makes it that much harder to switch providers if you ever decide to. (which is no doubt precisely why the companies try to push it so much)
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.
Indeed. And in many cases if they don't offer T.38 (the fax standard over VOIP), they offer an e-mail based Fax gateway that's even easier to use than using a physical machine.
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.
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.
Yup. Time-Spectrum has my landline for no extra cost, but that means if I switch to someone else, I'll have the extra hassle of switching phone too. Or going 100% cellphone.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
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?
Nope, all three of them are still around and doing fine.
They're around but they don't have the same influence when they were just the Big Three networks. For example, the only time I hear about CBS is when they're pissing on the fan-made videos of Star Trek.
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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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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Sunk cost and social inertia. Maintance is a small reoccurring fee. Closing a critical service incurs a onetime large cost. Which is cheaper paying $10000 every day for the next 10 years or paying $10,000,000 once, right now? Now which ones has the easier approval process? Those answers differ.
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.
Point taken, but it's not as if I trust my third-party VoIP provider, cellular phone provider, or indeed the trunk of the US phone system either...
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