

More than half age 25-29 only have cell phones - Bud
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101221/ap_on_hi_te/us_cell_phones_only

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davidu
That's it? I'd expect it to be much higher. I wonder what the percentage is in
an urban city like San Francisco... 80%?

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hugh3
Agreed. What are landlines good for?

Even if they were free I wouldn't have one, since when I _did_ have a landline
pretty much every call was phone spam.

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stonemetal
They make a great discount on your internet bill. Seriously though Some
internet providers either make it cheaper to have phone + internet from them
or make it impossible( or at least hard) to get internet without a land line.

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icefox
I have a phone line for this reason (cheaper) at the moment.

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jbhelms
This is not really surprising. I have a VOIP home phone, but only because I
don't want to chase down my cell when it rings. If i could just have my cell
phone work like a cordless phone at home, i.e. all the phones in the house
ring when my cell rings, then I would use just my cell.

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mshafrir
Google Voice can do this for you.

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jbhelms
Google voice can dial an existing landline. What i mean is when i get home, I
want to be able to place my cell into a cradle and when it rings it rings all
the home phones, and calls made from any of the phones in the house would
route through the cell network using my phone.

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frossie
_Only 16 percent of Northeasterners live in cell phone-only homes, the lowest
of any region. The highest frequency of wireless-only households is in the
South, where 29 percent live that way._

Can anyone here figure out the reason behind the statistic? I could imagine
cell-phone-only usage being lower than average in rural areas with poor
coverage, but the Northeast?

For the commenters asking "what good are landlines for", they still have their
uses, eg. in households with children not allowed their own mobiles for
various reasons, lower international call rates etc. (I know, you could say
"VoIP" but the mainstream penetration of that seems to be on the low side).

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locopati
Weather? In case of power outage, a land-line will still work (assuming the
phone lines aren't down). A cell-phone will work until your battery is gone.

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Zev
Weather is exactly the reason that my family (just outside of NYC) still keeps
a landline around.

Theres also the big blackout from a few years ago that hasn't really been
forgotten. If you were to ask, I bet it would come up more often than you
might think.

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alttab
I would expect that the lower-shelf would be way younger than 25. College
students living in apartments probably do not have landlines (I didn't when I
was in school).

Maybe one contributing factor to it starting at 25 and not say, 21, is that in
this economy many college grads are moving back in with their parents who have
land lines. College students who have stable jobs and are out on their own two
feet (a little bit older on average?) choose not to buy into the landline like
their parents continue to do.

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rythie
I've got one but I almost never use it, just need it for ADSL. In the U.K. I
don't see how you avoid one when cable companies give it for free and 3G is
too slow and expensive for home.

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AndrewDucker
Question - how do they get their internet? Internet in the UK comes over ADSL
(which comes with a landline) or via Cable (and that usually comes with a
landline too).

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delinquentme
umm haha? of course why do i need a land line?

NOW..... Where the hell did i leave that damn abacus ..

