Where are all the Landlines Going?

I know I am young (24) so my generation definitely knows what a cell phone is and how much money it can save if we just have a cellphone and not a landline. So many people I talked to no longer have landlines these days; or either they do, but never use them. Why? I think one reason cell phones win over landlines is the simple fact that they are portable. You can get a call anywhere. No longer do you have to be tethered to a phone jack to receive a call.

It is said, “for nearly three in 10 households, people do not even bother trying to call them on a landline phone.” Most figures show they either only have a cell phone or seldom if ever take calls on their traditional phone.  Most figures also show that dependence on cells is continuing to rise at the expense of wired telephones. “In the second half of last year, 16 percent of households only had cell phones, while 13 percent also had landlines but got all or nearly all their calls on their cells.”

It is far no surprise that these nifty, cool, little gadgets are growing, and growing quickly. Another reason why I think cell phone usage is growing is because solicitors. Cell phone users get freedom from those annoying solicitors. Families often either have their landline hooked exclusively to a computer or rely so heavily on their cells that they ignore landline calls because they are probably from telephone solicitors.

However, leaving out the poor landline can have some problems too. “The trends have an important impact on polling organizations, which rely primarily on calls to random landline phone numbers.” Calling cell phone users can be more costly for pollsters, in part because federal law forbids unsolicited calls to cell phones made by computerized dialing systems used heavily by pollsters. That is a joy to some people. I am definitely happy that I cannot get unsolicited calls to my cell.

But there is another problem — Also affected are the telephone industry and emergency service providers, who can find it harder to locate people calling from a cell phone. This can be crucial. My parents made the decision of switching to an unlimited cell phone plan and ditching the landline because they were not home. Before, they had their home phone forwarding calls to their cell phones anyway, so I could see their reasoning. More and more companies allow cell phones so it wasn’t a problem for their jobs. However, a situation that involved emergency help was delayed by the simple fact that they had nothing but a cell phone.

I searched and looked at the National Center for Health Statistics and found that out of the 13,000+ individuals they interviewed, they found some interesting findings:

-Low-income people are likelier than the more affluent to have only cell phones.

-About a third of those under age 30 only have cell phones.

-About 2 percent of households reported having no telephones

-Households with both cell and landline phones who rarely or never get calls on their landlines tend to be better educated and have higher incomes.

-Those with only cells tend to be living with unrelated roommates, renters rather than homeowners, and Hispanics and blacks rather than whites.

Of course, these finding do not apply for everyone,everywhere, and living situations, so you should not get offended, but their findings are interesting to see. I feel that, as time progresses and the sheer volume of people grow, landline may be the thing of the past, leaving us vulnerable to those polls and unsolicited phone calls. Kids these days are practically given cell phones after birth and the child grows up with the mindset that they don’t need a landline and that, my friends, is the start of a “landlineless” world.