About 73% of Americans aren't using landline phones anymore, a number that has tripled since 2010, according to information tracked through a federal health survey.
The information on phone use comes from the National Center for Health Statistics, which started its surveys about 20 years ago, when cellphone use became a worry for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which was concerned about reaching Americans for their phone surveys, reports The Washington Post in an analysis.
According to the latest surveys, landlines are more common among homeowners, with 34% having them, than among renters, at 15%. Hispanic Americans, meanwhile, at 20%, are less likely to have landline phones, compared to 30.5% of white or Black users.
Meanwhile, just 2% of U.S. adults only use landlines, and another 3% mostly rely on landlines, while 1% don't have a phone.
The largest number of holdouts against completely cutting the cord are people 65 and older, marking the only demographic where households with landlines outnumber the wireless-only user households.
The NCHS also has models of household phone usage for all 50 states, with the latest figures coming from 2020. They show that people in Western, mountainous states like Idaho, or rural states like Oklahoma and Mississippi have abandoned landlines, while people in Northeastern states such as New York are more likely to keep them.
Even so, as of 2021, fewer than one-third of households that still have a landline have simple wired telephone service, which does not go out during blackouts. Instead, homes with landlines more often depend on VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol), which sends calls through their internet connections.
Many carriers are starting to push customers toward digital lines rather than old-style copper phone lines, after the Federal Communications Commission in 2019 dropped a requirement that the lines be provided to every home.
The numbers are starting to show in company revenues as well. With AT&T, filings show that traditional voice and data plans brought in $1.7 billion in revenue in 2022, but netted $60.5 billion through wireless services.
The answers, though, don't always depend on demographics, notes The Post. Verizon and its predecessors have controlled landline phones in almost all the states in the Northeast, and as Verizon got an early start in adding cable and wireless services to customer bundles, many also added landlines, according to Michael Hodel, research director at Chicago-based investment analysis company Morningstar.
"Someone who's had Fios broadband and a landline phone from Verizon hasn't had much reason to switch providers and rethink which services they take," he said. "I would also bet that Verizon has offered attractive bundle prices to keep customers taking its phone service over the years — the incremental cost of providing the service to a broadband customer is pretty minimal."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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