Christine Thrower came to LSU from Clovis, N.M., a city 900 miles away from football-crazy fans and party-hard undergraduates.Thrower relies primarily on phone calls to keep in touch with her family. But instead of calling her parents’ landline phone, Thrower is part of a growing sector of people who are mainly a cell-phone-only lifestyle.”I have a grandmother who doesn’t have a cell phone,” said Thrower, English literature senior. “I call her landline.” At least 20 percent of households in 11 states rely only on cell phones according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study conducted this month. Louisiana ranks No. 27 with 15 percent of households following the cell-only trend.The CDC’s study, according to the abstract, was based on data from the 2007 National Health Interview Survey and the 2008 Current Population Survey’s Annual and Social Economic Supplement.Nielsen Mobile also reported in a September 2008 study that “at the end of 2007, 16.4 percent of U.S. households had abandoned their landline phone for their wireless phone, but by the end of June 2008, just 6 months later, that number had increased to 17.1 percent.”That 17.1 percent translates into 20.2 million households, the study said.It only makes sense that college students — a younger, more mobile generation — are perpetuating that trend.Nielsen said 64 percent of decision makers in wireless-substitution homes are in the 18-to-34 year-old age range. That age bracket comprises just 30 percent of the population in the U.S.”The wire-line side of the business … there’s less business there,” said Sue Sperry, AT&T spokeswoman. “But it’s translating into more business on the wireless side.”Sperry pointed out landlines still have an important place in society, especially in businesses and during emergencies, like a hurricane.”You don’t need electricity to operate a phone,” she said. “Your landline is the cheapest phone you can get at the discount store [and] is the one that works when you have an extended outage.”Savannah Smith, theatre sophomore from New Orleans, has been at the University for two years and lives on campus. She hasn’t had a landline phone since attending the University and doesn’t plan on ever buying one. She said all she needs is her cell phone.”It’s with me all the time, so people are always able to get in touch with me,” Smith said. “Just being in college, you have a lot more friends than you did in high school, and you have more of a network. It’s easier to keep track that way.”Gretchen LeJeune, Verizon Wireless public relations manager for the Houston-Gulf Coast region, said the trend of getting rid of landlines can be attributed to three factors: young people, expanding technology and money. A person saves $33 per month in a single-person household that’s moved from landline to cell-only service, according to Nielsen Mobile’s study.”… A phone just isn’t a phone anymore,” LeJeune said. “It’s a computer. It’s a lifestyle tool. People are more comfortable with it.”Experts aren’t sure what the lifespan of a landline phone service is, but they say landline phone service isn’t going away anytime soon despite this “cord-cutting” trend.
“I think the reason people have a home phone is … the clarity of a wired call is much better than a wireless call,” Sperry said. “Wired services are going to be around for a long time because primarily for business networks.”—-Contact Kyle Whitfield at [email protected]