Landlines No Longer a “Dominant” Service

[Commentary] The portion of US households using landlines for voice service has fallen below half for the first time, according to the latest data (link is external) on household voice telephony choices from the Centers for Disease Control. This is because more and more American households are cutting the cord for voice services and using only wireless telephones. Based on a USTelecom analysis of the new CDC data, by the middle of 2015 the US likely reached the cross-over point where more than half of telephone households were wireless-only and less than half used landlines. In any case, the US almost certainly will have reached that point by the end of this year. As Commissioner Mike O’Reilly suggested in a recent blog, traditional wireline voice carriers are no longer dominant providers and should not be singled out for more burdensome regulation.