I think that the problem here is that a good question was asked and it has been turned into a ****ing match.

Its not about who is smarter then who, but answering the question in a fashionable manner.

Here is an observation that I am going to make and maybe some forum members can comment in a positive manner.

For the first 70 years of radio, it has been the amateurs that has come up with the new technology. This technology was then transferred to the commercial side of radio.

Even the slow scan television that was used by NASA when they landed on the moon.

Today the technology is developed for public service radio and then it is converted to be used by amateur radio - after it is perfected by field testing it on the amateur radio frequencies..

You see - the problem is that there isn't any bandwidth left on the public service frequencies and so anything that they implement has to work before they deploy it.

It has nothing to do with using the frequencies that we have been given - more efficiently. Heck we have whole segments of bandwidth that isn't even used in most area's of the country.

Our biggest problem is that we use these frequencies for free, while other entities such as cellular telephone is willing to pay for that bandwidth.
Eventually what is going to happen is that it is going to be taken away from the amateurs, which is the reason why we left the barn door open and left the morons into amateur radio so we could swell our ranks so we could justify keeping the bandwidth given to us.

Talk around the FCC is that the FCC has received proposals to revoke privileges on the HF bands to operate AM Phone.
Most of the amateurs that uses digital is screaming for a larger portion of the spectrum to be set aside for digital only and to keep CW and phone away from their frequencies. As the rule is now written, you can operate CW anywhere on most any HF band.

The only way to give the digital people the bandwidth that they require is to take bandwidth away from others such as phone operators.
The only place they can take it from would be the amateur extra portion of the bands.

There has also been petitions filed to allow amateurs with just a technician class license to operate digital modes on more bands then just 10 meters and up. The FCC's response has been if they want to work digital that they need to upgrade their license. This is how the incentive license program works. Our problem is that the people that are lowly technicians are just technicians because they are either too stupid to pass another 35 question test or they are too lazy to take the test to get a General Class License...