More fuel to the smart cell phone fire for use in media consumption measurement: Nearly two-thirds (62%) of households with cellular phones had more than one cell phone in the house in the 4th quarter of 2005, according to a study released today by ICR of Media, PA. The trend is up from 53% of households in the 2nd quarter of 2002. The ICR CENTRIS omnibus conducts an ongoing survey of in-home technology usage in U.S. Households.

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When broken down by wireless carrier, Nextel has the highest proportion of customer households with multiple phones (77%) followed by T-Mobile (72%) and Verizon (70%). Rounding out the list are Cingular (68%), Sprint (67%) and Alltel (also 67%). AT&T appears to have the lowest proportion of households with multiple cellular phones (63%).

According to Barry Goodstadt, SVP for ICR CENTRIS, "these findings bear on the value that customers attach to push-to-talk (PTT) technology. That is, Nextel has been a leader in PTT and this would appear to position the company (now Sprint/Nextel) to grow their business among those households that are likely to purchase multiple cellular subscriptions since PTT enables customers to easily and freely contact other members within the household. AT&T/Cingular has also recently launched their own version of PTT and it will be interesting to observe whether their penetration into multiple-phone households increases as a result."

Household characteristics that correlate to having multiple cell phones include:

PC access the internet: Those households that use PCs for internet access are more likely to have multiple cell phones

Digital Camera Ownership: those households owning a digital camera are more likely to have multiple cell phones and/or one of the cell phones may, itself, be a digital camera

Marital status: those households including married couples were more likely to have multiple cell phones

Household size: those households with more people are more likely to own multiple cell phones

Number of children in the household: the greater the number of children, the more likely the household was to own multiple cell phones. This relationship is particularly pronounced among households with children aged 12-17 and is probably due to those children being provided with cellular phones themselves.