About 22.7 percent of U.S. homes apparently had wireless-only phone service in June 2009, according to a preliminary analysis of the most-recent survey by the Centers for Disease Control, up from about 20 percent in December of 2008.
In addition, nearly 15 percent of surveyed homes had a landline yet received all or almost all calls on wireless telephones.
A "family" can be an individual or a group of two or more related persons living together in the same housing unit (a "household"). Thus, a family can consist of only one person, and more than one family can live in a household (including, for example, a household where there are multiple single-person families, as when unrelated roommates are living together).
Approximately 21 percent of all adults--approximately 48 million people--live in households with only wireless telephones.
The percentage of households that are wireless-only has been steadily increasing, and the 2.5-percentage-point increase from 2008 through the first six months of 2009 is about equal to the 2.7-percentage-point increase observed from the first six months of 2008 through the last six months of 2008.
The percentage of households that are wireless-only increased by about five percentage points in just 12 months, from 17.5 percent in the first six months of 2008 to 22.7 percent in the first six months of 2009.
There are about 113 million U.S. homes with fixed telephone lines, and about 118 million U.S. dwellings, according to the Federal Communications Commission. A five-percent increase in homes using wireless only would amount to about six million homes.
Should that rate of shift continue, one would expect a further attrition of about three million homes to the wireless-only category over the next six months.
A large majority of households using wireless-only communications (68.5 percent) were in households lived in by unrelated adult roommates. Think college students and younger workers early in their careers and you get the picture.
Likewise, 41 percent of adults renting their homes had only wireless telephones. About 13 percent of adults owning their home are wireless only, the CDC says.
Nearly half of adults aged 25 years to 29 years (45.8 percent) lived in households with only wireless telephones, the study suggests.
More than a third of adults aged 18 to 24 (37.6 percent) and approximately a third of adults aged 30 to 34 (33.5 percent) lived in wireless-only households.
Some 21.5 percent of adults aged 35 to 44 were wireless only; 12.8 percent of adults 45 to 64; and 5.4 percent of those 65 and over. However, the percentage of wireless-only adults within each age group has increased over time, the CDC says.
Among all wireless-only adults, the proportion of adults aged 30 years and over has steadily increased. In the first 6 months of 2009, the majority of wireless-only adults (57.2 percent) were aged 30 and over, up from 48.4 percent three years earlier.
Adults working at a job or business (19.5 percent) and adults going to school (21.1 percent) were more likely to be living in wireless-mostly households than were adults keeping house (12.7 percent) or with another employment status such as retired or unemployed (nine percent).
Adults with college degrees (19.7 percent) were more likely to be living in wireless-mostly households than were high school graduates (13.7 percent) or adults with less education (12.1 percent).
You might suspect that households with children are less likely to be wireless only, but that seems not to be the case. In the CDC survey, adults living with children (20.5 percent) were more likely than adults living alone (10 percent) or with only adult relatives (14.7 percent) to be living in wireless-mostly households.
You might suspect that more users are wireless only in urban area, and that seems to be the case. Adults living in metropolitan areas (16.9 percent) were more likely to be living in wireless-mostly households than were adults living in more rural areas (13.5 percent).
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