1 In 5 US Homes Relies Solely On Cell Phone Service

For the first time ever, the number of U.S. households with cell phone service alone exceeds those with only traditional landline phone services.

The high-tech shift is being driven, in part, by slowing economic conditions.

A survey conducted by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that 20 percent of households had only cell phones during the last six months of 2008, a 3-percentage point increase over the first half of the year. 

The move represents the largest six-month increase since the government began collecting such data in 2003.

By comparison, just 17 percent of those responding to the survey reported having only landline phone service, with no cell phones.

That ratio has changed remarkably in recent years, with just 3 percent of households reporting they were wireless only in 2003, with 43 percent reporting having only landline phone service.

The survey involved in-person interviews with 12,597 households, and was conducted from July through December of last year. The National Health Interview Survey compiled the data, which was released Wednesday.

Stephen Blumberg, a CDC senior scientists and one of the report’s authors, said the increasing number of cell-only households was due in part to a recession that has forced many families to pinch pennies wherever they can.

"We do expect that with the recession, we’d see an increase in the prevalence of wireless only households, above what we might have expected had there been no recession," Blumberg told the AP.

Just 15 percent of U.S. households have both landlines and cells but make few or no calls on their landlines, the survey found.  Many times this is because the landlines are wired in to computers. 

When added to the number of wireless-only homes, this means that 35 percent of U.S. households are reachable only on their cell phones.

The trend poses challenges for some pollsters, for years relied on reaching people via landline telephones.  Indeed, an increasing number of polls now include calls to people on their cell phones, something more costly due to federal laws that ban pollsters from using computers to place calls to wireless phones.

Roughly one-in-three people aged 18 to 24 live in households with only cell phones, making them much more likely to rely exclusively on their cell phones. The same holds true for 40 percent of those aged 25 to 29.

Those most likely to live in wireless-only households also include renters, the poor, Hispanics, people living in the south or midwest United States and those living with unrelated adults, such as unmarried couples or roommates.

Roughly six in 10 households have both landline and cell phones, while 20 percent have no phones at all, the survey found.

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