For a rough estimate, *conservatively* assume 200,000 active amateurs.
Conservatively, do they have, on average, $5,000 invested in the cost of their
equipment, antennas, towers, feed lines, books, tools, components, connectors
and the host ofo other things that make up the well-rounded amateur station? If
so, the math is pretty staggering: 200,000 X 5,000 = $1,000,000,000.00. Just
in the US, amateur radio has collectively invested a billion dollars in its
ability to volunteer its time to provide benefit to the public.
Now, this is not a scientific calculation, but only a personal observation. But
it isn't too far off the mark for my station, and I have a modest one.
Ed Hare, W1RFI
> -----Original Message-----
> From: rfi-bounces@contesting.com [mailto:rfi-bounces@contesting.com]On
> Behalf Of Ian White, G3SEK
> Sent: Monday, May 10, 2004 4:10 AM
> To: rfi@contesting.com
> Subject: Re: [RFI] BPL Protest Opportunity? Give up? NO!
>
>
> Richard (Rick) Karlquist (N6RK) wrote:
>
> >Or they're say, go ahead and sue, and if you win, the
> monetary damages
> >will be zero (or the proverbial one dollar), because ham
> radio is not a
> >business, ham radio licenses are free, thus there is no
> "economic loss."
>
> How about the investment in all the HF equipment whose resale value
> would be almost wiped out? How about the loss of future
> earnings to the
> large and small companies that are presently supplying that market?
>
> Those would be very useful statistics for any national radio society
> (yours and mine) to collect. The totals would be peanuts
> compared with
> the projected earnings of BPL, but as a very rough estimate a class
> action could be claiming well over $10,000,000.
>
> That should be enough to get their attention. It's still peanuts
> compared with the projected income from BPL, but it certainly
> gives the
> lie to any claims of "no economic impact".
>
>
> Good news from over here, I hope: since British Telecom has
> decided that
> it will roll-out DSL to almost the entire country - including small
> rural exchanges - by summer 2005, the economic incentive to invest in
> BPL seems to have collapsed.
>
> There is still a problem for phone subscribers who live more than 4
> miles from the exchange hardware, but BT are promising to
> look at that
> too. If they do manage to extend the range of DSL, that technology
> should benefit the USA as well.
>
>
> --
> 73 from Ian G3SEK
>
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>
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