Americans hang up on landlines as cellphones dominate

NEW YORK — Deborah Braswell, a university administrator in Alabama, is a member of a dwindling group — people with a landline phone at home.

According to a U.S. government study released Thursday, 50.8 percent of homes and apartments had only cellphone service in the latter half of 2016, the first time such households attained a majority in the survey. Braswell and her family are part of the 45.9 percent that still have landline phones. The remaining households have no phone service at all.

More than 39 percent of U.S. households — including Braswell’s — have both landline and cellphone service. The landline comes in handy when someone misplaces one of the seven cellphones kicking around her three-story house in a Birmingham suburb. “You walk around your house calling yourself to find it,” she says.

It’s also useful when someone breaks or loses a cellphone and has to wait for a replacement.

Renters and younger adults are more likely to have just a cellphone, which researchers attribute to their mobility and comfort with newer technologies.

The in-person survey of 19,956 households was part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Health Interview Survey, which tracks landline use in order to assure representative samples in ongoing health studies. The survey has a margin of error of plus or minus 1 percentage point.

Cellphone-only home have other commonalities. “Wireless-only adults are more likely to drink heavily, more likely to smoke and be uninsured,” even after factoring for age and income, says Stephen J. Blumberg, the study’s coauthor (and a landline user himself). “There certainly is something about giving up a landline that appeals to the same people who may engage in risky behavior.”

Why that’s so will require further research.

The survey doesn’t get into why people ditch or keep landlines, though landline users cited a number of reasons for hanging on in phone interviews and email exchanges with The Associated Press.

Plenty of people would get rid of their landlines if they could. It goes beyond complaints about cellular reception at home.

Joe Krkoska, a supply chain director, needs a traditional copper wire for his home security system in Zionsville, Indiana. Getting rid of the line would require crews to drill holes in his home and put batteries in the bedroom. No thanks, he says.

Chris Houchens, who works in sales and marketing, says his phone company forces him to get a landline with internet service. There’s no cable TV alternative where he lives in rural Smiths Grove, Kentucky.

And those who could drop phone service might pay more after losing package discounts.