US: Cell-Only Households Growing At The Expense Of Landlines

bealtine

http://www.informationweek.com/news/telecom/business/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=215801954&cid=RSSfeed_TechWeb

Cell-Only Households Growing At The Expense Of Landlines

The CDC study says the exclusion of wireless-only households can skew the results of health surveys, political polls, and other phone-based research.

By W. David Gardner
InformationWeek
March 11, 2009 04:57 PM

The relentless march by Americans to trade their landline telephones for cell phones is evident in a study released Wednesday by the National Center for Health Statistics. The study estimates that 14.7% of American households had cell-only connections in 2007.

The highest rates of cell-only households were in Oklahoma and Utah, where at least 26% had just cell phones and no landline phones, while only 5.1% of Vermont households were wired-phone free. The report, conducted by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, covered 2007, and its authors said the national prevalence of cell-only households has likely grown another 5% since then.

The federal agency conducted the survey because use of different types of phones can skew the results of important polls of Americans. "The exclusion of households with only wireless telephones has potential implications for results from health surveys, political polls, and other research conducted using random-digit-dial methods," the report stated. "Indeed, the potential for bias due to incomplete coverage of the U.S. household population remains a real and growing threat to health surveys conducted only on landline telephones."

Other states with high prevalence of wireless-only households were Nebraska (23.2%), Arkansas (22.6%), Iowa (22.2%), and Idaho (22.1%). States with low prevalence of wireless-only households were Connecticut (5.6%), Delaware (5.7%), South Dakota (6.4%), Rhode Island (7.9%), New Jersey (8.0%), and Hawaii (8.0%). The remaining states fell somewhere in between.

The survey also reported that 13.6% of U.S. adults were living in wireless-only households in 2007. "Results show great variation in the prevalence of wireless-only adults across states, ranging from a low of 4.0% in Delaware to a high of 25.1% in Oklahoma," according to the report.

The report noted that telecommunications companies typically rely on regional and state estimates of wireless-only households, which "are not sufficiently accurate" for their purposes.

Sponge Bob

bealtine wrote: »

The study estimates that 14.7% of American households had cell-only connections in 2007.

It is 31% here . WE WIN !!! Wahay !! Actually no we don't . Line rental is so expensive here that it distorts everything else .


The plains states were the most wireless. Diabolically long lines an lots of lightning I should think .

spacetweek

Sponge Bob wrote: »

It is 31% here . WE WIN !!! Wahay !! Actually no we don't . Line rental is so expensive here that it distorts everything else .

The plains states were the most wireless. Diabolically long lines an lots of lightning I should think .

This is interesting. Did the wireless households in the plains states never have a phone in the first place, or did they get rid of it when they all got cellphones? I wonder.

Where did you get 31% for Ireland? This seems very high. I know very few people in this country that don't have landlines, although of course you don't need one anymore. I don't have one, for example.

bealtine

spacetweek wrote: »

This is interesting.

Where did you get 31% for Ireland? This seems very high. I know very few people in this country that don't have landlines, although of course you don't need one anymore. I don't have one, for example.

I don't have any statistics to refer to so I have to use anecdotal evidence. A number of people have told me they simply find that the "cost benefit analysis" they did on their fixed line was negative.
In other words the damn thing was too expensive @ E50 per month for basic broadband so it just doesn't stack up. I've even seen businesses drop the fixed line in favour of mobile.

Most have switched to cable or wireless (where available) and even some use 3g dongles. All usually cost around 20-30 a month so the choices were simple really.
The crazy line rental is the killer...

The only people left with fixed lines really are those who have no choice or have buckets of money. Some keep it as they like the fixed line because the quality is usually better than with mobile.

The "writing is on the wall" for fixed telephony if the prices remain so high even though technically it's probably one of the better means of delivering broadband even with the 5km limits. With a bit of imagination and will this could easily be expanded to 8-10km or so (using "repeaters")

watty

There ARE statistics for lines here. I forget where I read them(Comreg? )

82% households before Privatisation

<69% a year or so (or more)ago and dropping. I don't think Comreg or eircom deny this. It's likely accelerating since 2007.

Mobile Penetration 106% in 2006, 120% Q4 2008.
Line rental is about €5 a month more than 50mins of calls on O2 in BillPay (€15 amonth).

My Phone bill on Diallup was over €120 a month in in 2005. Now on Metro (Wireless + VOIP and two lines, real sockets, real numbers) it's < €5 a month for calls and about €36 a month for BB (6Mbps down 1Mbps up, 30ms ping).

Who wants a phone line? Seen UPCs adverts?

People are even switching from DSL to Mobile! They have 140k in less than 2 years.

Part of the strategy of massive cross subsiding of Data by Voice+SMS on Mobile may be to get people to get rid of land-lines and drive up voice calls. That's what I would do.

Sponge Bob

69% + 31% = 100% . I assumed that every household has a mobile nowadays .

Irish lines are nowhere near as long as prairie lines and of course the prairie is flat which is good news for cellphone operators .

smellslikeshoes

Adding in the loss of 41k retail telephone customers in the figures they published at the end of February its probably a few percent below 69 now.

These changes are going to happen everywhere but our artificially high Line rental is pushing things along much faster here. I'm sure there are a lot of people outside Ireland watching the situation here since its essentially getting a look at the future for other markets before it happens.

Capt'n Midnight

What % of the remaining lines are
* ADSL
* Pensioners with Free Line Rental

watty

OR ISDN
:: ISDN lines can't do DSL in Ireland, though you can have both on same line in Germany.
:: Some businesses need ISDN as well as Broadband.
:: Do eircom count a Pri ISDN as 31 or 32 "lines"?
:: Do eircom count basic ISDN as two lines as it can do two calls at once?


Since it turns out that the only "Innovative" extra service for LLU is TV/VOD that has such a poor catalogue and only can go at decent bit rate near exchange and basically is and poor version of UPC, Sky, or FreeSat, what is the point of LLU for the consumer?

With falling line numbers, poor copper, pair gains and lines too long, LLU is 10 years too late to help competition now, even if fixed. We need a new NGN plan.

Capt'n Midnight

http://www.rte.ie/business/2009/0311/eircom.html

An Eircom executive has said that people in rural Ireland who live more than 5km from a telephone exchange will never get broadband
...
Mr Galvin said it would not be economical to extend fixed line broadband nationwide and that some parts of rural Ireland would have to reply on wireless broadband, which is slower.

Does this mean that the broadband roll out has more or less stopped ?
And it forget about it if you are 10Km away.

BTW Looks like they count ISDN channels.


http://www.eircom.ie/bveircom/pdf/eircom_results_dec_08.pdf

Net Retail PSTN line losses of 24,000, offset by 9,000 WLR net gains. This compares to net Retail losses of 4,000 in the prior year, offset by 4,000 WLR net gains. Retail PSTN lines at 31 December 2008 were 1,264,000 while Wholesale lines were 317,000.
...
Retail DSL subscribers at 31 December 2008 stood at 457,000. Total DSL customers had increased to 655,000 by 12 February 2009, including 6,000 pendings.