A new Centers For Disease Control And Prevention study indicates that almost 15 percent of U.S. households have cell-only phone service with no backup landlines, Reuters reports.
The study, sponsored by the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics, estimates that about 14.7 percent of American households rely solely on their cell phones.
"These findings are important to CDC because many of our larger surveys are done on calls to landline phone numbers," Stephen Blumberg, health scientist with CDC's National Center for Health Statistics, told Reuters. "All of those adults with only cell phones are being missed in these surveys."
Oklahoma leads the country in the percentage of households with just cell phones, according to a report from the CDC, with 26.2 percent of households using cell phones as opposed to landlines in 2007.
States that followed Oklahoma with a significant population of their homes using only cell phones include Utah, at 25.5 percent, Nebraska, at 23.2 percent, Arkansas, at 22.6 percent, and Idaho, at 22.1 percent.
Oklahoma also had the highest percentage of cell-only adults, at 25.1 percent, while Delaware, at 4 percent, had the lowest population of adults using only cell phones. Washington, D.C., also ranked among the highest communities of cell-only users at 25.4 percent.
Meanwhile, the percentage of cell-only phone use varies significantly within regions in the U.S. For example, Nebraska has the highest population of cell-only users (23.2 percent) in the region, while its neighbor South Dakota has the region's least (6.4 percent).
