wrote in message
oups.com...
These are the numbers of current, unexpired
amateur radio licenses held by individuals
on the stated dates, and the percentage of
the total number of active licenses that
class contains:

As of May 14, 2000:

Novice - 49,329 (7.3%)
Technician - 205,394 (30.4%)
Technician Plus - 128,860 (19.1%)
General - 112,677 (16.7%)
Advanced - 99,782 (14.8%)
Extra - 78,750 (11.7%)

Total Tech/TechPlus - 334,254 (49.5%)

Total all classes - 674,792


As of November 30, 2005:

Novice - 26,885 (4.1%) [decrease of 22,444]
Technician - 273,794 (41.4%) [increase of 68,400]
Technician Plus - 44,527 (6.7%) [decrease of 84,333]
General - 135,094 (20.4%) [increase of 22,417]
Advanced - 74,373 (11.2%) [decrease of 25,409]
Extra - 107,281 (16.2%) [increase of 28,531]

Total Tech/TechPlus - 318,321 (48.1%) [decrease of 15,933]

Total all classes - 661,954 (decrease of 12,838)

Note that these totals do not include licenses
that have expired but are in the grace period.

They also do not include club, military, RACES
or other station-only licenses.

Note also that effective April 15, 2000, new
Novice, Technician Plus and Advanced licenses
are no longer issued.

Since April 15, 2000, FCC has renewed all existing
Technician Plus licenses as Technician. It is therefore
informative to consider the totals of the two classes,
since the Technician class includes a significant
number of Technician Plus licenses renewed as
Technician.

The interesting aspect of the renewed Tech+ as
simply Techs is that from that 4/15/00 date onward there
really is no way for anyone to know if a particular tech
operating in the Novice segments of HF is actually
authorised to do so since the FCC database doesn't
record the prior tech+ status, nor does it reflect
if/when a tech may have obtained a 5wpm CSCE
certificate after 4/15/00.

Cheers,
Bill K2UNK