RadioBanter - View Single Post - Ham-radio is a hobby not a service

March 5th 04, 03:24 PM

(Len Over 21) wrote in
:

In article , Alun
writes:

Personally, I don't have a cell phone, so if I lost wired phone service
I would only have ham radio to fall back on. Oddly enough, cell phones
have not yet spread to every man, woman and child, but I don't know
anyone who doesn't have a phone number.

Alun, according to the Census Bureau's data as of 2003, there are
100 million cellular telephone subscriptions in the USA. That's
about one for every three citizens. Rather large "spread," I'd say.
:-)

If every licensed amateur in the USA had one useable radio, then the
number of amateur radios would be one per about 430 citizens. Not
as big a "spread."

LHA / WMD

And your point is...?

I'm not really sure what you're getting at, but my point was that it is
reasonable to assume that everyone has a TV and a phone, for example, but
we're not yet at that point with cellphones. Close, but not there yet. Of
course, I would say that, as I don't have one.

The level of use of ham radio is not particularly relevant to the
discussion, except in that there are clearly enough of us to help out in an
emergency.