• by Jack Loechner , Staff Writer @mp_research, March 5, 2004

Portable or Permanent Phone? That is the Question

In a summary of a their recently released report, Cutting the Cord: Consumer Profiles and Carrier Strategies for Wireless Substitution, In-Stat/MDR notes that among those consumers still using a landline as their primary phone, 26.4% would consider replacing it with a wireless phone. The firm finds that 14.4% of US consumers currently use a wireless phone as their primary phone, with the remaining 85.6% still using a landline as their primary phone.

Clint Wheelock, Director of In-Stat/MDR's wireless research, says that "...consumers now have an unprecedented degree of flexibility and convenience in cutting the cord on their landlines, with wireline-to-wireless number portability as part of the FCC's Wireless Local Number Portability mandate."

The study also reports that:

Consumers using a wireless phone as their primary phone are most likely to be young (ages 18 to 24), single, residing in an urban area, subscribers to Sprint and T-Mobile, and mobile data users.

Factors that would influence consumers to drop their landline phone in favor of wireless include:

• better prices,
• improved network coverage
• improved quality-of-service
• richer mobile phone functionality

Factors that would prevent consumers from replacing their landline with a wireless phone include:

• lack of reliability
• cost of service

The report concludes that "It is most likely that 29.8% of wireless subscribers will not have a landline by 2008."

You can find out more here.