13.6 Percent of U.S. Homes are Wireless Only

Preliminary results from the January–June 2007 National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) indicate that more than one out of every eight American homes (13.6 percent) had only wireless telephones during the first half of 2007.

In the first six months of 2007, 13.6 percent of households did not have a traditional landline telephone, but did have at least one wireless telephone. Approximately 12.6 percent of all adults—28 million—lived in households with only wireless telephones; 11.9 percent of all children—nearly 9 million children—lived in households with only wireless telephones.

The percentage of adults living in wireless-only households has been steadily increasing since 2003, CDC finds. During the first six months of 2007, one out of every eight adults lived in wireless-only households. One year before, one out of every 10 adults lived in wireless-only households. And two years before that, in 2004, only one out of every 20 adults lived in wireless-only households.

The observed increase in the percentage of adults living in wireless-only households from the last six months of 2006 to the first 6 months of 2007 was not statistically significant.

But other observed increases over time in the percentage of adults living in wireless-only households were statistically significant, CDC finds. These results suggest a possible recent decline in the rate of increase.

The percentage of adults and the percentage of children living without any telephone service have remained relatively unchanged over the past three years. Approximately 1.9 percent of households had no telephone service. Approximately 3.5 million adults (1.6 percent) and more than one million children (1.7 percent) lived in these households.

For the period January through June 2007, the results reveal that more than one-half of all adults living with unrelated roommates (55.3 percent) lived in households with only wireless telephones.

Adults renting their home (28.2 percent) were more likely than adults owning their home (6.7 percent) to be living in households with only wireless telephones.

More than one in four adults aged 18-24 years (27.9 percent) lived in households with only wireless telephones. Nearly 31 percent of adults aged 25-29 years lived in households with only wireless telephones. As age increased, the percentage of adults living in households with only wireless telephones decreased. Wireless-only percentages were 12.6 percent for adults aged 30-44 years; 7.1 percent for adults aged 45-64 years; and two percent for adults aged 65 years or over.

Men (13.8 percent) were more likely than women (11.5 percent) to be living in households with only wireless telephones. Adults living in poverty (21.6 percent) were more likely than higher income adults to be living in households with only wireless telephones. Adults living in the South (14.9 percent) and Midwest (14 percent) were more likely than adults living in the Northeast (8.8 percent) to be living in households with only wireless telephones.

Non-Hispanic white adults (11.3 percent) and non-Hispanic black adults (14.3 percent) were less likely than Hispanic adults (18 percent) to be living in households with only wireless telephones.

Address Books for Landlines?

Embarq is adding an address book feature to its home phones, allowing people to look up an entry and dial it by speaking a name into the handset.

Embarq also is testing a text-messaging function for home phones in some markets. When a text message is sent to a land-line number, the home phone rings, converts the message into audio, and plays it back. The land-line phone user can reply with an audio message or press a button to send a standard text response.

You have to admire Embarq's efforts to add features to landlines that are standard for mobiles. You also have to wonder how well address books, which are personal, and text messages, also personal, are going to translate into a "public" setting, which most landline phones represent.

One-person households won't have that problem, of course. "Public" and "personal" are the same, in such cases. But it will be an interesting test.