Wireless: Where We are Going

There weren’t any surprises in the Federal Communications Commission’s recent report on wireless competition, but one tidbit, already made available by the National Health Interview Survey, is an indicator of where things are going.

The number of adults who rely exclusively on mobile wireless for voice service has increased significantly in recent years. According to the January to June 2010 National Health Interview Survey (NHIS), 24.9 percent of adults, or one in every four, lived in households with wireless phones only during the first half of 2010.

In its most recent study, the NHIS found that 30 percent of respondents only used mobile phones during the last half of 2010, an increase of three percentage points since the first half of 2010. In addition, about 16 percent of respondents indicated they received all or almost all calls on wireless telephones despite having a landline phone in the home as well.

More than half of adults aged 25 to 29 (54 percent) lived in households with only wireless telephones. This rate is greater than the rates for adults aged 18 to 24 (46 percent) or 30 to 34 (44 percent), according to the NHIS survey.

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