Sullivan says that to “explore the potential of cell phones as an income tool in the U.S. and also look at the extent to which cell phones function as security blankets in emergency and crime situations” he relied upon two major surveys: a statistically large online sampling of 110,000 prepaid TracFone users and a scientific survey by the Opinion Research Corporation of 1,005 Americans. The report revealed that among those who do not own a cell phone, 37 percent are retired, 29 percent have a high school education or less, 38 percent make less than $35,000 annually, and 30 percent are unemployed.
Citing the online survey of 110,000 prepaid cell phone customers, the Sullivan report pointed out that among the 30 percent identified as belonging to a working household they attributed an annual income gain of $2,361 to their cell phone. Based on the TracFone data, if non-cell phone households in the lowest income brackets could obtain phones and earn additional income, the total gain would result in $11.1 billion additional revenue, according to the report.
John Breyault, the director of the New Millennium Research Council, says the Sullivan report has “major implications for federal and state Lifeline and Link-up programs providing subsidized phone service to eligible consumers.”
“These programs reach very few of those that they are intended to help and have a strong ‘last-century’ bias in favor of landline phone service,” Breyault observes.
Though the NMRC is promoting the Sullivan study, neither the organization nor MIT sponsored the study, officials say.
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