For nearly three in 10 households, don’t even bother trying to signal them on a landline phone. They either only have a cell phone or seldom whether ever take calls on their traditional phone.

The federal figures, released Wednesday, showed that reliance on cells is continuing to rise at the expense of wired telephones. In the second half of last year, 16 percent of households only had cell phones, while 13 percent additionally had landlines but got all or nearly all their calls on their cells.

The number of wireless-only households grew by 2 percent since the first half of last year. Underscoring the rapid growth, in early 2004 just 5 percent had only cell phones.

Households with cell phones who rarely whether ever use their landlines grew by 1 percent since the first half of last year.

Such families often either have their landline hooked exclusively to a computer or rely so heavily on their cells that

they disregard landline calls considering they are probably from telephone solicitors, said Stephen Blumberg, senior scientist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and an author of the report.

The trends have an fundamental impact on polling organizations, which rely chiefly on calls to random landline phone numbers. Calling cell phone users can be more costly for pollsters, in part considering federal law forbids unsolicited calls to cell phones made by computerized dialing systems used heavily by pollsters.

Studies have shown that so far, society who have only cell phones don’t give significantly different answers to questions than those who use landlines. Pollsters, though, are under growing pressure to survey the growing number of cell phone users and some already do so.

additionally affected are the telephone industry and emergency service providers, who can find it harder to locate society calling from a cell phone.

The survey plus found…

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