With More Americans Dropping Landlines, Tower Construction Will Increase

According to US Telecom, “U.S. households are continuing to “cut the cord” and replace landline telephones with wireless voice service, according to the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). Although the CDC data showed some slowing in cord cutting, wireless-only households are on track to reach between 43 and 45 percent of all telephone households by the end of 2013. These data provide ongoing support for USTelecom’s view that providers of traditional telephone service are no longer dominant in the provision of voice communications.” By eliminating landlines and switching to sole cell phone use, more cell towers will need to be built to handle the capacity. In densely populated cities, small cells and DAS will have to be installed to help with the overload. Combining wireless-only and wireless-mostly households, 55.1 percent of U.S. households depended on wireless either exclusively or mostly by the second half of 2012. (Source: US Telecom) If this trend continues, landlines may become a thing of the past and future generations will be confused by phones with cords, and baffled by the idea of the rotary phones.