Who still owns a landline phone? You might be surprised at what the data shows.
If you still have a landline telephone, then you may be old enough to remember smelly phone booths and the rotary dial.
That is one finding from a surprisingly deep trove of research on the demographics of a vanishing breed of landline lovers.
The notion that many older Americans like landlines may surprise no one. But here are some other, less obvious findings: Landline holdouts are more likely than wireless converts to own a home. They are more likely to live in the Northeast. They are less likely to smoke, and less fond of binge drinking. They are more likely to wear seatbelts, to exercise and to carry health insurance.
That profile comes from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. For the past two decades, the federal agency has been studying the traits of Americans who hold on to their landlines, and contrasting them to people who cut the cord and rely exclusively on cellphones.
Fewer than one-quarter of Americans still have landlines
More than three-quarters of Americans live in homes without landlines: 76% of adults and 87% of children, as of the end of 2023, according to the agency’s most recent report.
By contrast, 20 years ago, only about 5% of Americans dared to rely entirely on cellphones. Consumers began to ditch landlines in large numbers around that time.
"To landline or not to landline: This is a big consumer choice," said Jonathan Spalter, CEO of USTelecom, the broadband trade association.
Federal researchers began tracking the health and habits of telephone users more than 20 years ago, and not for the reasons you might expect.
Researchers everywhere count on telephone surveys to compile data, often relying on landline telephones. In the 2000s, as consumers canceled home telephone service, researchers worried that their surveys might miss people who had given up landlines. And that omission might skew the surveys.
The CDC was concerned about excluding the growing wireless crowd from its National Health Interview Survey, which has tracked the national health since 1957.
“There was a need to understand who these folks were,” said Stephen Blumberg, a division director at the National Center for Health Statistics, the CDC unit that collects data on landline holdouts. “Because if their health characteristics were different from people who just had landlines, then those statistics would be biased.”
Landline cord-cutters: 'The young and the restless'
Researchers found that cutting the cord says something about who you are.
One trait stood out: The boldness it took to go wireless, at a time when cellphone service was spottier and landlines were more prevalent.
“The act of giving up a landline was, in some ways, a risk-taking behavior,” Blumberg said.
When researchers compared the traits of landline holdouts and cord-cutters, they found a host of other differences, especially in the early years of the wireless trend.
“The wireless-only population was originally best described as the young and the restless,” Blumberg said. They were younger adults, often renters, more likely than their elders to smoke and drink, and less likely to bother with seatbelts.
“What does this all relate to?” Blumberg said. “You might say it’s young people. Young people who think that they’re healthy and invincible will engage in all of these risk-taking behaviors.”
Yet, even when researchers controlled for age and other demographics, they still found that wireless Americans took more risks with their health than landline holdouts.
The wired and the wireless: A contrasting profile
Blumberg and his colleagues found other demographic differences between the wired and wireless, especially in the early years of the survey, when cutting the cord was a big deal.
White Americans were more likely to keep their landlines than their Black or Hispanic peers. Men were slightly more inclined than women to go landline-free. Low-income Americans ditched landlines at a much higher rate than the wealthy. And landlines were – and still are – more prevalent in the Northeast.
“Why the Northeast? I don’t have a clear answer to that,” Blumberg said.
But he has theories. People in the Northeast are more likely to live in multigenerational households, he said, which means they are more likely to live with an elderly person. Older people like their landlines.
Market factors may also be at work. Verizon and other fiber-optic providers often package service in a bundle: Internet, cable television and a telephone line for one low price. In some cases, oddly enough, you end up paying less money if you keep the landline.
There are other good reasons to maintain a landline, said Craig Moffett, a telecommunications analyst.
“In many cases, it’s as simple as poor cellular coverage in the home,” he said. “In others, it’s a desire to maintain a separation between work-at-home and personal calls. There are still some older alarm systems that require a landline phone line.”
Many Americans remain passionate about their landlines
Many Americans wax nostalgic about landlines when hurricanes knock out cellphone service, as Hurricane Helene did across broad swaths of the South last month. This week, Hurricane Milton knocked out cellphones in Florida.
Landline lovers sometimes band together when telecom companies move to ditch old-style, copper-wire telephone service. (Official industry term: plain old telephone service.)
Earlier this year, California regulators rejected a bid by AT&T to pull back from copper-wire landline service in the state. The carrier reasoned that plain old telephone service is, well, old, and demand is low. Only about 5% of the households AT&T serves use copper-based landlines, a company spokesperson said. Most landlines now make calls through an internet connection.
"We need to make a fundamental choice about whether our nation's communication networks should run on outdated copper or ultra-fast, reliable, modern networks," Spalter said.
Even so, the pushback from California consumers proved that many Americans are still passionate about their old-fashioned landlines.
“I am not ready to give up my landline,” wrote John Beckmann of Sherman Oaks, California, in a comment to regulators on the AT&T case. “It enables me to have multiple telephone extensions located conveniently throughout my house. As a senior citizen, I do not have the capability to hunt for my cellular phone, short of having to carry it with me whenever I move around in my house, which is more than inconvenient.”
More:Phone companies want to eliminate traditional landlines. What's at stake and who loses?
And Chris Pavlopoulos of Anaheim, California, offered these thoughts: “The cell signal in my area is spotty. I often spent an hour-plus on hold with calls to government agencies and insurance companies. I have to use my landline on those calls because they get dropped on my cell.”