said by ISurfTooMuch :

Suppose you have a serious outbreak that requires immediate notification of all residents in an area. When everyone had landlines, you could call all numbers in a given group of exchanges and be pretty sure you'd reached everyone. With cells, people often move and keep their old number, which may be from an area across the country.

said by pnh102 :

I am sure the government, if it needed to send out such a message, could make use of emergency texting. The only problem of course is how do you make sure it is really from the government and not someone trying to cause a panic?

Come to think of it how do you prevent that if the government just tried calling everyone instead? I know that if anyone calls me saying they are from the government, I am quite skeptical.

said by TACSPEED :

So the emergency broadcast system needs to include the Internet now.

said by battleop :

Is anyone else scratching their head wondering why the CDC is tracking this kind of info? I guess the FCC will start tracking the flu next.

said by funchords :

Everyone wants to talk about how odd it is that the CDC is the best source for this communications statistic.

Wireless-only folks differ from those who still keep a landline, Blumberg explains. Not only do they skew younger, but they behave differently, too. Introduce those differences into health surveys, he says, and the results are biased.

Half of wireless-only users are under 30 years of age, but the greatest predictor of whether they rely solely on a cell phone is if they own or rent: renters are four times as likely to be wireless-only as are people who own their homes, Blumberg says. On top of that, they're more likely to live in metropolitan versus rural areas, and in or near poverty.

said by TKJunkMail :

Isn't that why they have radio and TV and the "Emergency Broadcast System" ??? You don't call everyone in a city on the phone. You put out a broadcast on TV.

said by ISurfTooMuch :

Not to mention the fact that the increase in cell-only households presents other issues in disease control. Suppose you have a serious outbreak that requires immediate notification of all residents in an area. When everyone had landlines, you could call all numbers in a given group of exchanges and be pretty sure you'd reached everyone. With cells, people often move and keep their old number, which may be from an area across the country. How much of an issue is that, and how do you deal with it? That's something the CDC needs to find out.