Switch to cell-only service well under way

We remember attending a technology conference at the Gateway Center in Oberlin in the early days of the Internet, watching a jerky, pixilated projected image of a speaker streaming from Colorado.

We don't remember much else about the conference, other than a prediction about a great migration of telephone communication to wireless transmission and television to wire or fiber transmission.

The speaker might not have predicted the popularity of satellite television in addition to cable, but his telephone prediction was right on the money.

And it's not the rich who are leading the way. Cell phones are becoming ubiquitous in developing countries around the world, and it's the poorer states that are leading the way in dropping landlines in the United States.

At least 30 percent of adults in 10 states have only cellular phones, including Nebraska, which saw that number climb from 19 percent in 2007 to 30.4 percent in July 2009-June 2010.

The leading states are in Arkansas and Mississippi, where about 35 percent of adults have only cellphones, according to figures released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Mississippi has a 21.9 percent poverty rate, the highest in the nation, and Arkansas 18.8 percent, compared to the national rate of 14.3 percent.

New Jersey and Rhode Island had the smallest proportion of wireless-only talkers, 13 percent.

The recession probably accelerated the trend, with many of us noticing how little our landline was actually used, and how cell phones have so many more features.

We can understand how wireless communications is growing so quickly; it is much easier to build a tower than string telephone lines to individual homes.

But the move is not without its problems. Giving up a land line is a big step for someone who's owned one for decades. Cell phones are a serious distraction for fidgety teens in class and dangerous for drivers, and health concerns are being raised again.

And, political polls that are taken by telephone will have to find a way to reach cell phone-only households to be accurate.

For our part, we would hope some sort of cellular telephone directory would become available for making important calls to our neighbors.

But, like it or not, it's clear that the great switch to wireless is well underway, and it's something we're going to have to learn to live with.