Untethered competition

wireless phones, it seems, are ubiquitous. Talking, texting, surfing. On the street, on the T, and in the car. You can’t swing a dead Samsung without hitting someone with a cell phone of some kind.

In Massachusetts, as you would expect, cell phone saturation is near 90 percent, with more than 5.8 million wireless phones on the air in the state, according to the 2010 Massachusetts Department of Telecommunications and Cable Competition Status Report.

More people are dropping their home landlines in favor of all wireless, though not at the same rate as nationally. Bay State residents, it seems, have a hard time cutting the cord completely. Between 2005 and the end of 2008, the most recent data available, the number of households with wireless-only service nearly tripled from 4.1 percent to 11.3 percent, according to state estimates. That is still below the national average of 20.1 percent.

According to the state report, more than 90 percent of the state’s subscribers have their choice of five carriers —Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, or Sprint Nextel, which is counted as two because the company has two separate wireless systems. The competition will be reduced with AT&T’s acquisition of T-Mobile. The five carriers only have overlapping service in 50 percent of the land mass in Massa­chusetts, and about 6 percent of the state has no cell service at all.

The farther west of Interstate 495 you are, the fewer your choices. In the population-rich metro area inside Route 128, all five carriers are available to 97 percent of the population. Out in the Berkshires, only 55 percent of subscribers have the full range of choice. An estimated 15,000 people from 58 towns, mostly in the western part of the state, cannot subscribe to any cell service, while another 20,000 have only one provider available.

“Not surprisingly,” the report says, “coverage correlates with population density and flatter topography, as wireless signals are blocked by obstacles such as terrain and foliage.”