More than half of U.S. households have ditched landline phones

The landline telephone — curly-corded, cord-free, rotary or with chunky plastic buttons — used to be a fixture of American homes.

But like most analog technology, it’s rapidly going the way of the dinosaur. More than half of U.S. households — 53.9 percent — rely entirely on cell phones, according to a survey from the National Center for Health Statistics, an arm of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The number is remarkable for how rapidly it has increased, according to researchers behind the survey. In 2006, only 15.8 percent of survey respondents said they didn’t have a landline.