R.I.P. Landlines
From party lines to 5G, here’s why you can get rid of your home phone
Your 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…
