NIelsen: Wireless Households on the Rise

According to a new study from Nielsen Mobile, there is more than 20 million U.S. telephone households or roughly 17 percent of the nation's total, who only have mobile phones for home telecommunications.  The research also predicts that one in five U.S. households could be wireless-only by year's end.

Other key findings were:

• U.S. "cord cutters" tend to have lower income levels -- 59 percent have household incomes of $40,000 or less.
• Smaller households, with just one or two residents, are more likely to cut the cord than larger households.
• Moving or changing jobs are the biggest life events associated with cord cutting: 31 percent of cord cutters moved prior to eschewing landlines and 22 percent changed jobs.
• Wireless adopters tend to use their mobile phones more than their landline peers, 45 percent more per phone, but still save an average $33 per month.

The study also found that 10 percent of landline phone customers have experimented with wireless-only in their household, but then returned to landlines.  Nielsen found that needing a landline for other services (satellite TV, pay-per-view, etc.) is the primary reason people mend the cord.