R.I.P. Landlines

From party lines to 5G, here’s why you can get rid of your home phone

Tim Ventura
OneZero

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Photo: Pongsak Tawansaeng/EyeEm/Getty Images

YYour home telephone is on its way out, eclipsed by newer communications technologies offering more features and greater convenience. According to a 2019 report by the National Center for Health Statistics, only 42% of Americans still have a landline phone — and the graph below by Statista shows that number dropping by 3.6% every year.

The authors of the 2019 NHIS Wireless Substitution Report, Stephen J. Blumberg, PhD and Julian V. Luke wrote:

“Preliminary results from the July–December 2018 National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) indicate that the number of American homes with only wireless telephones continues to grow. More than one-half of American homes (57.1%) had only wireless telephones during the second half of 2018 — an increase of 3.2 percentage points since the second half of 2017. More than three in four adults aged 25–34 (76.5%), and a similar percentage of adults renting their homes (75.5%), were living in wireless-only households… ”

If the trend holds, the common landline “home phone” will have essentially disappeared in the U.S. within the…

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