Report shows users moving from landlines to wireless

According to a new report from the Federal Communications Commission, as of one year ago less than half (47.9 percent) of the 1.4 billion phone numbers available to carriers have been assigned to customers. Local carriers saw their utilization rate decrease from 48.8 percent to 47.3 percent over the previous six months. Wireless utilization rose 0.6 percent to 66.7 percent over the same period. Since the government began allowing users to port their phone numbers to new accounts in November 2005, more than 163 million people have taken advantage of the option. Of those, four million switched their landline number to a wireless phone, while only 200,000 did the reverse. The rest switched their number from one wireless account to another or from landline to landline. The most utilized area codes in the U.S. were Michigan's 947, which covers Oakland County, with 91.6 percent of numbers assigned, followed by 646, which covers Manhattan in New York and has 79.8 percent of available numbers assigned.