Majority of US Households Now Cellphone-Only, Government Says

Megalith

Megalith

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In before “no sh*t, Sherlock,” but US households with landlines are now officially in the minority, based on recent government survey data. The exact percentage of American homes lacking a landline but having at least one cellphone is just over half, at 50.8 percent. The results come from the National Center for Health Statistics, who wanted to figure out which service certain demographics preferred. In a weird correlation, they found that most wireless-only users are people who condone in high-risk behavior like smoking and drinking.

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.
 
I have a landline, because I work from home a lot of the time. As a result of that, the reliablility of Copper > any discount Cable phone may provide, as I'm not a cord cutter (See: Tweens). But I'm getting raped like a prison bitch on the landlines (2)....like..truly "WTF!? are you STUPID for paying this price?"...and the answer is...not stupid, just lazy. Gotta move to cablephone with a UPS backup, I won't go cellular only because cellular is the first to fail when sheet gets real.
 
Gave up my phone company landline many years ago, and switch to a cable/landline due to the crazy high price.
At the time the cable/landline was cheap due to the bundle discount.
But the cable/landline price started going up every year, till they hit that same crazy price I was originally paying the phone company, and that was WITH a bundle discount.
Dumped the cable/landline and switch to an almost free IP phone (about $4/month to cover the taxes)
Waiting to see how long this lasts.
 
Cell phone and Google Voice home cordless set here. I don't even know where the RJ11's are terminated in my ancient house.
 
commissioneranthony said:
How do you like the Obi boxes? I was contemplating getting them, but this was around the time I switched to fi.
Click to expand...

They are great. Simple interface, but you hardly need it because they are set it and forget it. Getting around the Google Voice settings is much more a pain in the ass, but still not bad.
 
No shirt, Sherlock? Nah, can't be that.
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I reluctantly switched to cell phones a while back. It can be cheaper than a landline, but I'm paying too much right now. Data really hurts that price tag.
 
i would love to get rid of the 40 dollar a month landline.

wife won't let me, so it sits there all day, the only calls we get are telemarketers.

what a waste.
 
Obi200 (free google voice) + my ISP and a cellphone covers all the bases for me. Keep an eye on slickdeals and you can generally find an Obi for 35-40 bucks. For the best performance, I'd connect it to the router directly and give it a high priority in QoS.
 
Or get an Ooma like I did and stick with their free service.
$99 for the box, and $4 a month (they bill you for the phone line taxes)
Free service allows1,500 minutes a month.
Not bad for about $50/year (your price will depend on your state/local taxes), and they actual provide support if you need it.

I connected it to my 4 station home phone system and it sounds just like a land line.

Only complaint is the $40 they charge to port your home number is a bit of a rip-off.
 
I would probably still have a landline if I wouldn't have to pay an extra $5/month or so to keep it unpublished. It's been 9.5 years since having one and even the last 1.5 years of having it was because SBC wouldn't let me do a dry loop at the time.

I really need to look into Obi's E911 offerings again as that's what I'm most concerned about. I would prefer something that dials local 911 directly instead of adding another layer going to a company call center first. I vaguely remember that not being an option last time I looked into it.
 
I have not had a landline since I got my first bag phone. My current house does not even have phone line running to it.
 
New houses and apartments here haven't even had land lines laid in for years. Just fiber and cable. And it wont be long before cable isn't done anymore.

Here (DK) the amount with land lines is dropping very fast year after year. Its expected to be virtually gone around 2020.

2016 numbers.
~7.2 million mobile subscribers.
~550K land lines.

Land lines lose around 100K a year in a steady stream.
 
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Haven't had a landline in years. And now the the kiddos are on the verge of being old enough to start staying home by themselves, we looked into getting a landline back. Cox and CenturyLink both wanted in the range of $35/mo. We added a third line to our Cricket plan for $20/mo and they gave us a free Lumia 640 with no activation charges. Next step will be getting a wireless home phone system with Bluetooth to pair it to and voila!...makeshift cheaper landline.
 
HeadRusch said:
I have a landline, because I work from home a lot of the time. As a result of that, the reliablility of Copper > any discount Cable phone may provide, as I'm not a cord cutter (See: Tweens). But I'm getting raped like a prison bitch on the landlines (2)....like..truly "WTF!? are you STUPID for paying this price?"...and the answer is...not stupid, just lazy. Gotta move to cablephone with a UPS backup, I won't go cellular only because cellular is the first to fail when sheet gets real.
Click to expand...
You should check out a VOIP phone. I bought an Ooma a few years ago - think it was about $80? My phone bill for it is around $3/month. It has good quality and has been very reliable.
I would get rid of the Ooma as my wife and I both have cellphones. For some reason, she insists on having this. The funny thing - I have the Ooma set to ring on her cellphone when someone calls our home phone # anyway. So, it's really kind of pointless...but not worth the argument and it's cheap.
 
I am gonna keep my land line in case I have to get in and out of the Matrix...you never know
 
Do they consider VOIP to be a landline?

I've had Ooma since it came out, and parents on Vonage since it first launched I think 15 years ago.

We use wireless phones around the house that are also bluetooth enabled, so that when the phones are on the wireless charger it can also ring all the phones in the house.

For big homes this is nice, as you can just page the kitchen from upstairs, and not worry about missing any calls. The nice thing about the VOIP "landline" is that international calling is far cheaper, and quality is always 100% excellent unlike cellphone where sometimes you get shit reception or the phone's own VOIP over wifi flakes out.
 
I discovered my cellphone had been "compromised" so now only have a landline and a tablet with Textnow VOIP for free calls and texting.
 
I dumped land line as soon as I possibly could. That was about 2000/2001. My roommate who rented a room at my new condo was furious that we didn't have a land line. (We both had cellphones.) I asked when the last time was he used the land line at our previous apartment. He couldn't remember. Now he can't imagine having a landline and has talked his parents and siblings out of having them too.

The last thing holding many of my friends to land lines was the phone numbers. Once they realized they could transfer that number to a cellphone, the land line empire crashed and burned throughout my buddies.

I have 1 friend who has a land line. That poor soul has old school DSL that still requires a landline..... I know sad right?
 
I still have one, but it's only copper to the garage and then turns into VOIP at the FIOS ONT. And that wasn't even an option, Verizon just did it and clipped my POTS line. It works fine, but now that Frontier runs the show I want out.

I've been reading extensively about the OBI, OOMA and recently just came across the T-Mobile Line Link. It's basically a T-MO magic jack.... but $10 a month (if you're a TMO customer) which includes E911 and all the fees/taxes. That seems to be what no one mentions when you start leaning towards OBI and OOMA. If you want 911 to work you have to pay for it, and the normal monthly taxes fees etc. Free isn't free, for me it's 7-8 bucks a month (according to what I've read). For $10, and a $30 adapter, TMO will do it for me. I'm going to get one but I'm trying to avoid the TMO retail store idiot tax where they charge $25 for a SIM (it takes a SIM like everything else). I found new TMO SIM cards on Amazon for $6 each and ordered a few. With any luck I'll be able to activate it myself and avoid the retail robbery.

Why bother with a landline? I work from home sometimes and it's a requirement. All day long conference calls on a cell phone blows. My company uses a random mix of dial in only calls, and some that I can do with a PC headset. If they would standardize and stick with it, maybe I could do it all through the PC.... but I'd need to find a wireless headset solution. Being chained to the computer all day sucks, and I've tried some bluetooth headsets but they suck. Not really willing to drop $100+ on a high end bluetooth headset when my $20 cordless phone with a $10 wired headset does it better.

But if none of this was the case, yeah I wouldn't bother, I would just live with the cell phone and Skype the rest on PC.

Oh and I don't know what the deal is but doing a cell to cell call is usually a deal breaker. My friends all call my cell phone, from their cell phone... and it's like shouting into a broken record player sometimes. "I talk... you talk... no wait we can't talk at the same time. You go... now I go. You broke up there, repeat that. Are you driving through a fucking tunnel, I cannot understand you." is how that goes. I usually hang up on them and call back from my landline just to make life easier.
 
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I'm keeping my land line for the foreseeable future. I live in South Louisiana, and when a hurricane knocks out all the power, cell networks are clogged to the point that texts take forever to go through and calls are near impossible. I keep a pluggable phone in the closet to replace my cordless phones so I don't have to put it on the generator.
 
I have a "land line" via FIOS, which we all know isn't what a copper landline is. During a power outage, my FIOS battery will last 8h when it's new. In its current state (a few years old) probably 2h at best. Copper provided power, and for longer, so that's a loss. But I digress..

If FIOS et al would not throw in the phone line "for free" in the bundle, I think the number of "land lines" would be significantly lower. The TelCos must be getting some benefit for providing the service.

The one thing that is nice about having it is working from home and having to do conference calls. The quality of the FIOS line is much, much better than that of any cell phone.
 
I would have thought that threshold crossed long ago.
 
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