[RFI] BPL Protest Opportunity? Give up? NO!

[Hare,Ed, W1RFI]

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 at contesting.com [mailto:rfi-bounces at contesting.com]On
> Behalf Of Ian White, G3SEK
> Sent: Monday, May 10, 2004 4:10 AM
> To: rfi at 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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