Commentary
San Francisco Bucks Trend in Shift From Landlines
- by Jack Loechner , Staff Writer @mp_research, November 3, 2006
According to Telephia, more and more U.S. households are dropping their landlines and opting to go completely wireless. A 2nd quarter study shows that households in Detroit and Minneapolis-St. Paul have the highest rate of wireless substitution among the 20 largest cities in the country.
Kanishka Agarwal, Telephia's VP of New Products, said "Several factors influence the rate of wireless substitution across different metropolitan markets including income levels, ethnic mix, and average age."
Detroit and Minneapolis-St. Paul posted household wireless substitution rates of 19 and 15.2 percent, respectively. The Tampa metropolitan area secured a 15.1 percent rate, representing nearly 177,000 households. Nearly 219,000 households in Atlanta and 220,000 households in Washington D.C. cut the cord.
San Francisco landed at the bottom of the list. According to the report, the San Francisco metropolitan area posted just a 5.5 percent wireless substitution rate, which works out to be a little over 105,000 households.
"San Franciscans have traditionally been early adopters of advanced technologies... For topology and zoning reasons, mobile networks in San Francisco are not as reliable as compared to other top cities and it's a less attractive substitute," added Agarwal.
Wireless Substitution Rates for Largest U.S. Metropolitan Areas | |||
Metropolitan Area | Total Households | Wireless Substitution Rate | Wireless Only Households |
New York | 6,988,000 | 6.5% | 453,254 |
Los Angeles | 5,374,491 | 9.8% | 527,497 |
Chicago | 2,751,090 | 8.3% | 228,748 |
Philadelphia | 2,309,987 | 7.4% | 171,102 |
Boston | 1,950,139 | 10.0% | 194,962 |
San Francisco | 1,903,708 | 5.5% | 105,127 |
Dallas | 1,694,764 | 8.0% | 135,219 |
Washington, D.C. | 1,613,508 | 13.6% | 220,145 |
Houston | 1,613,508 | 8.7% | 140,821 |
Phoenix | 1,543,860 | 13.5% | 207,714 |
Atlanta, GA | 1,532,252 | 14.3% | 218,393 |
Detroit | 1,474,213 | 19.0% | 280,612 |
Seattle | 1,288,485 | 13.2% | 169,938 |
Tampa | 1,172,405 | 15.1% | 176,877 |
San Diego | 1,102,757 | 9.6% | 105,983 |
Cleveland | 1,079,541 | 7.3% | 78,287 |
Denver | 1,056,326 | 11.3% | 119,460 |
St. Louis | 1,056,326 | 7.2% | 76,090 |
Minneapolis | 975,070 | 15.2% | 148,254 |
Baltimore | 858,990 | 5.8% | 49,981 |
Source: Telephia Total Communications Survey, Q2 2006 | |||
For additional information, please visit Telephia here.
Jack Loechner is the Editor of The Center for Media Research's daily Research Brief. You can reach him at jack@mediapost.com.