Most ‘Wireless-Only’ State Might Surprise You
Close your eyes and imagine someone using their cellphone. Where do you picture them? There’s a good chance it’s not in the middle of a potato farm.
But if you live in Idaho, that just might be the case.
In fact, according to a new study from the Centers for Disease Control, which monitors health statistics, more than half (52.3 percent) of households in Idaho are now wireless-only, meaning residents rely entirely on cellphones, having cut the cord on their landlines.
Second to Idaho is Mississippi, where almost half (49.4 percent) of adults have ditched their landlines to go wireless-only. Arkansas was third and Utah, fourth. The nation’s capital, Washington, D.C., was ranked among the states in this survey, finishing fifth in terms of most adults who are wireless-only.
The mid-Atlantic and the Northeast are the regions most likely to grip on to landlines the hardest. Nearly 79 percent of households in New Jersey still are connected to wirelines. New York also ranked among the "most connected."
The CDC also measured the percentage of calls made on cellphones, regardless of whether a person has a landline. Those numbers fell in line with the above statistics, with rural states in the South and the West having the highest percentage of numbers dialed on a cellphone.
Almost 40 percent of American homes have gone wireless-only as of summer 2013.
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