Men Talk More on Cellular Telephones,
Survey Shows

June 14, 2001 01:24 PM ET

ATLANTA (Reuters) - If a telephone is a girl's best friend, a cell phone is a boy's best friend.

Women may still dominate telephones at home, but men use their mobile phones 35 percent more than do women, a survey conducted for Cingular Wireless found.

The nation's second-largest mobile phone service provider, said men used their mobile phones an average of 372 minutes a month, compared with 275 minutes for women.

They are also the heaviest users of wireless plans with a lot of minutes.

The survey, conducted by International Communications Research, found that 20.2 percent of men use 600 minutes a month or more, significantly more than the 9.9 percent of women who use the same amount of minutes.

"The evidence is clear -- men are the big gabbers of the wireless world," Greg Roberts, director of segment marketing for Cingular Wireless, said in a news release.

Cingular is a joint venture between telephone operators BellSouth Corp. BLS.N and SBC Communications SBC.N .

The survey also found that women use their mobile phones for personal calls more than men, while men use their phones more for business.

These results contrast sharply with traditional phone usage at home -- women use home phones 52.6 percent more than men at 510 minutes a month according to the survey.

Wireless Internet usage by both sexes were about the same. About 1.7 percent of men's calls and about 1.6 percent of women's calls were used to connect to the wireless Internet.