20 percent of U.S. now landline free

Every month I ask myself why we continue to pay $40 a month for a wired telephone. My wife says it's because of emergencies or something, but all it really does for me is create a weak spot through which telemarketing robots can attempt to sell me carpet cleaning services and debt collectors can try to track down the wrong person.

Now a full 20.2 percent of Americans have bid farewell to the wired phone line, a pace that the News & Observer notes is rising at record speed, jumping 3 percent in the last six months alone to break through the 20 percent threshold.

If that pace keeps up, fully 50 percent of the country could be landline free by 2014, if not sooner.

Among other things, the shift creates an interesting challenge for pollsters, which usually only target wired phones when asking that critical question of who you're going to vote for in the next big election. Since younger and lower-income users are the ones most likely to drop their landlines, polls that don't hit up an appropriate spectrum of cell-only users are likely not representative of the community at large.

Should you drop your wired phone line? It isn't without some complications: As the linked story notes, 911's locating services are currently more accurate when callers are on a wired phone, and landlines continue to work even if the power's out. That said, the prospect of saving about $500 a year on a largely redundant telephone line offers incredible and immediate appeal for many, so don't be surprised if, six months from now, you see another blog post from me declaring that a quarter of Americans are now flying cell-phone-only.