Alexander Graham Bell might be shocked, but many Lancaster County residents probably wouldn't be surprised that a higher percentage of county homes have no household telephone service compared to the state as a whole.

The county has a large Plain population so that finding is what one would expect. But while it's extremely rare for these families to have phones installed in their houses, for long-standing religious and cultural reasons, increasingly they are using them, even as they are careful to keep them outside the house.

n According to the 2000 U.S. census, almost twice the percentage of Lancaster County's occupied housing units (2.7 percent) have no phone service compared to the state average (1.4 percent).

While the numbers have dropped across the board since the 1990 census, when the county and state figures were 4.3 percent and 2.6 percent, respectively, in a few local municipalities, more than a fifth of the housing units and in one case, more than a third report having no telephone service.

One of the biggest declines occurred in Lancaster city; as of 2000, 3.3 percent of residences had no telephone service, compared to 7.8 percent in 1990.

Mayor Charlie Smithgall attributed that trend to a couple of factors.

''More people realize the value of phones,'' he said, including the ability to get dial-up Internet access via phone lines. ''And answering machines are better and easier to use.''

''I'm also seeing more cellphones,'' Smithgall said.

Mark Tolbert III, a spokesman for the Census Bureau, said it's a ''safe assumption'' that some respondents included cellphones as representing their household phone service.

But because cellphones weren't part of the question, ''we can't say for sure.''

When future data is collected, that's one of the issues the census will be looking at, Tolbert said.

While the county percentage in the 2000 census is still small overall, there are nine municipalities where at least 10 percent of the houses report having no telephone service.

The presence of Old Order Amish in these townships is a likely explanation for the higher-than-average numbers, said Donald B. Kraybill, senior fellow at Elizabethtown College's Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies. The number of Amish households in Lancaster County has doubled in about the past 20 years, he said.

Around 30 percent of Old Order Amish households in Lancaster County do have a phone on their property, said a member of that community who asked not to be identified.

Many families share phones, which are in outbuildings or shanties away from the house, with each family having its own number, he said.

Phones also are becoming more commonplace among those who operate businesses, he said.

In Leacock Township, 487 of the 1,426 housing units 34.2 percent are without phone service, followed by Bart Township, 28.8 percent, and Colerain Township, 20.3 percent.

Rounding out the top nine are Eden Township, 16.4 percent; Sadsbury Township, 16.1 percent; Paradise Township, 11.5 percent; Salisbury Township, 10.7 percent; Strasburg Township, 10.3 percent; and Upper Leacock Township, 10 percent.

Among the Old Order Amish, ''one of the things that has changed in the last 10 years is greater access to the telephone,'' said Kraybill, who's also a professor at Messiah College.

But there's still a cultural taboo prohibiting the installation of phones in houses, he said, which dates from around 1910.

The census question asked if residents had phone service ''available in this house, apartment or mobile home'' from which they could both make and receive calls.

Given the question's wording, Kraybill said he was unsure if Old Order Amish families would have said yes, even if their phone was outside the house. ''But if they took it literally, they might've said no.''

In the 2001 edition of his book, ''The Riddle of Amish Culture,'' Kraybill discusses how the Old Order Amish population has carefully integrated the telephone into daily life without letting it disrupt the bonds that hold families and the larger community together.

''Although quicker and handier,'' Kraybill writes, ''the phone threatened to erode the core of Amish culture: face-to-face conversations. Thus, the restrictions on phones help to preserve separation from the outside world as well as social capital within.''

Because lack of a phone created practical problems, especially in times of emergency, he writes, telephone shanties began to appear after 1940.

These shanties are typically found at the end of lanes or beside barns and sheds. ''Several families share the phone and its expenses. With an unlisted number, the phone is primarily used for outgoing calls to make appointments and conduct farm business,'' Kraybill explains in his book.

Phone use has now extended beyond the community phone. ''Many farmers have a private phone in the barn, tobacco shed or chicken house, usually tucked away from public view,'' he adds. ''A growing number of families have private phones outside their homes.''

However, ''the strongest pressure for phones comes from business owners,'' Kraybill writes. ''By the turn of the 21st century, many entrepreneurs were printing phone numbers on their business cards and brochures, an unheard-of practice only a few years earlier.''

Cellphones also have made inroads among the Amish, creating a new challenge, he reports. ''The church discourages cellphones, but many contractors use them to coordinate mobile work crews on several jobs. ... The church has steadfastly maintained its taboo on phones in private homes, but that line is difficult to enforce with the portability of cellphones, which makes them especially troublesome.''

In what he calls ''the telephone bargain,'' Kraybill writes that the Old Order Amish have negotiated 'an ingenious arrangement. ... They have agreed to exclude it from homes, while allowing limited use for commercial purposes.''

This agreement ''is a way to uphold tradition and absorb change, to appease the traditionalists as well as the entrepreneurs who need phones for economic survival. It is a deal that allows the Amish to have their cake and eat it too preserving tradition while bending to economic pressures.
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