More cellphone-only than landline-only households.

The U.S. has passed a milestone in telecommunications history–the percentage of Americans in cellphone-only households now exceeds the percentage of people living in landline-only households, according to Mediamark Research Inc. This is one of the key findings in The Birth of a Cellular Nation, a newly released MRI white paper.

MRI conducts approximately 26,000 in-home, in-person interviews yearly with U.S. adults, collecting data in two “waves” of interviews with 13,000 respondents.

The landline-only population has been larger than the cell-only population since MRI first began measuring cell phone use in 2000. This remained true up through the company’s survey wave fielded from March-October 2006; in that survey period, the cell-only population was 12.4% of the population, compared to 14.5% who were landline-only. In the most current wave (fielded from September 2006-April 2007), those positions were reversed, with the cell-only segment rising to 14.0%, and the landline-only population dropping to 12.3%.

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