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© Copyright 1996 by the Virtual Publishing Company.
Ham Radio Online welcomes letters from readers. We reserve the right to chose which to publish and to edit the letters as necessary. The opinions expressed in the letters are strictly those of the writer and not necessarily of Ham Radio Online.

Is Ham Radio Still Relevant?

Ed Mitchell, KF7VY, www.hamradio-online.com, 17 October 1996

Over many weeks I worked on writing an editorial opinion to go with the title. My goal was to create a market analysis of ham radio today and tommorrow and attempt to identify new directions and opportunities. I looked at the demographics of who becomes a ham radio operator and why. I guessed that cellular phone service has become an answer for many who might otherwise have considered ham radio. I considered the impact of future low cost satellite radio phone service - and the Internet - and pondered the future importance of HF radio communications. I wrote down pages of analysis and explanations. I intended to move from a list of challenges to forming a plan for exploiting the opportunities. Unfortunately, a lot of the research was not leading to opportunities but instead to still greater challenges faced by ham radio. So numerous pages of analysis into this quagmire, I gave up and started over with this shorter question: Times have changed. Where do you think we should go in the 21st Century? Where do we go from here? What do we do to make ham radio relevant in a world awash in high technology (and increasingly low cost) telecommunications?

Ham radio of the 20th century is not going to be the ham radio of the 21st century.

The intent of this editorial is not to be about doom and gloom but to confront reality. The times, the people and the technologies have changed and its time to figure out how ham radio moves forward into the 21st century. This opinion is intended to shock and make you think a bit. The first step is to understand why ham radio of the 20th century won't cut it for ham radio of the 21st century. After crossing that chasm, we can move forwards to attacking the challenges.

We happen to believe that ham radio is the hobby of the 21st century. What else integrates all the hot technologies and activities of today? Technologies like wireless voice and data communications, science, computers, education, space, the Internet, international perspectives, community service and volunteerism and on and on - Ham radio is going to be the hobby of the 21st century. Let's figure out how.

The Fantastic Pace of Communications Technology

The pace of change in the world of communications is astounding and breathtaking. Who would have dreamed a decade ago that 1 out of 4 homes would have a cellular phone subscription or that we would routinely exchange information throughout the world on a massive interconnected network called the Internet? To understand why anyone would question the future of ham radio, you must learn about the magical and almost unbelievable pace of innovation in communications technology that is sweeping the planet.

The whole world is going digital. Analog systems will soon be obsolete. Everyone will have communications; many will have inexpensive wireless communications. The Internet may be slow and primitive today (even at 28.8 kbps, Internet access is about 25 to 100 times faster than amateur packet radio networks) but within 12 months you will begin to see deployment of Asynchronous Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL) telephone technology providing 1.5 million bps up to 6 million bps digital connections to homes and business. For the rest of us, 56 kbps analog modems that use our phone lines will ship in 1997 - and being priced, we understand, little higher than today's 33.6 kbps modems.

Broadcasters are literally lining up to use the Internet as a new form of broadcast (or in Internet terminology "multicast") media. Where I work (in the USA), we listen to a local broadcast station in the United Kingdom over a digitized audio data stream that is pumped continously over our local area computer network. The bits are converted into audio and played through my computer's speaker. Using today's technology the quality is already on par or better than the equivalent shortwave broadcast signal.

Everything is moving into digital bits. "DSS Satellite TV", or DirecTV or the "Dish" Network satellite systems are all sending digital television transmissions. The DSS system operates 27 transponders at 30 Mbps (megabits per second) each, or nearly a gigabit of data every second (that's nearly 1 billion bits per second). Each 30 Mbps transponder is subdivided using statistical multiplexing to provide combinations of several encoded TV, audio or data streams. High Definition TV promises to replace today's analog TV system with higher resolutions and larger pictures - all using digital TV signals.

Cellular (GSM in Europe and TDMA/CDMA in the U.S.) and upcoming PCS portable phone systems are all using one form or another of digital voice encoding and transmissions. 38 million people in the U.S. subscribe to cellular phone service today; and an almost equal number subscribe to paging services. By the end of 1997, close to 50 million people in the U.S. will regularly use cellular phones. In Scandanavia, 1 in 4 people subscribe to cellular service. Developing nations are skipping the installation of wired networks and going direct to wireless local loop telephone systems. Everything will be wireless.

Metricom's Ricochet wireless data network provides low cost, unlimited wireless packet radio Internet access at 30 kbps in several areas of the U.S. Digital Audio Broadcasting (or DAB) systems are in testing and will soon deliver high quality digital audio signals to replace today's FM radio broadcasts; service will be available from terrestrial transmitters and also direct from orbiting satellites to homes and vehicles.

Behind this array of digital devices lies the Internet as a massive bit pipe - pumping digital text, images, audio and even television - throughout the world. Developing nations, known for their inadequate telecommunications infrastructure, are catching up and sometimes surpassing the developed industrial nations. Teledesic and other "Big LEO" satellite systems promise to deliver cost efficient T-1 (1.544 Mbps) network access to the most remote locations of the world.

Meanwhile, traditional "spectrum" of the radio kind is up for sale. Spectrum auctions in New Zealand (since 1989) and the United States have created a new economic force for the allocation and management of the radio spectrum. There are serious proposals to submit virtually all radio spectrum to auctions and free market economics. [Please see the online references at the end of this page] The references will give you some insight into the influence that spectrum auctions are having on government, and particular, how politicians view spectrum auctions as "free money". Indeed, as we publish this opinion section, the ARRL has issued a bulletin that the U.S. Congress has directed the auctioning of 5 MHz of Amateur spectrum solely to increase Federal revenues. Are you scared yet?

Within this modern day milieu sits ham radio - a fascinating and historically important radio service open to all. But does anyone but us ham radio operators care anymore? This is intended as a harsh, blunt question to foster serious discussion. Today, or maybe tommorrow (okay, maybe 1999) most everyone has communications, and rather advanced communications at that - where do we go from here?

Demographics of the Past Versus the Future

Demographically, times have changed. Decades ago, the stereotypical image of a ham radio operator was an older white male spending hours a day tinkering and talking on his radios. But today's world is vastly different. The average family has two wage earners. The basic cost of buying a home for a young working couple is often 30% to 40% of their two incomes. With a high percentage of cash flow devoted to home expenses, there is insufficient money or time to spend hours at a time chatting with the world on a multi-thousand dollar HF rig plus antenna installation. Throw a couple of kids into the mix, and between work and family life, time for leisure activities has often vanished.

The result is different kind of ham radio experience for today's ham than for the ham of 30 or even as few as 20 years ago. Did you know that that average person in the U.S. today has 11 fewer days of leisure time each year than just 20 years ago (source: USA Today)? Tom Poberezny, President of the Experimental Aircraft Association, writes in the October 1996 Sport Aviation of the difficulties in recruiting new entrants to personal aviation. He notes that "Based on a recent study, 51% of those surveyed indicated that time was the reason they did not learn to fly".

What impact do you think this has on people developing new interests, particularly in an activity that requires active involvment, not passivity like watching television or professional entertainment/sports, and high costs ($300 to $2,000 for radios and antennas)?

I've read that over 40% of today's licensees in the U.S. are technician class licensees. Some argue this is because of the "code free" license; I'm willing to argue that in large part this is due to demographic changes, and possibly the low period of the solar sunspot cycle (making HF propagation boring at this time). New hams are integrating ham radio into their everday activities. Ham radio, especially portable ham radio, is something that is enjoyed while commuting (hence, during a time of dead sunspots, you see an increase in Technician class licensees happy to operate on VHF and UHF frequencies only); others take along ham radio while hiking with the family, out for a bike ride, sailing, or even paragliding. Ham radio is less an end unto itself and more an adjunct to other activities. This probably accounts for the perception that hams are "not into building things anymore" (although we think that hams building ham "software" instead of "hardware" should be included in the list of those who do still build things).

Competition

There are new competitors for our time and money. And when it comes to local and even long distance communications, there are new competitors for those who might otherwise have been interested in ham radio. For local convenience communications, cellular service is becoming very inexpensive (and will fall even further in the near future). In our neck of the woods, you can acquire cellular phone service for the following costs:

With this pricing structure, the cost of acquring the cellular phone is almost free and the monthly service charge is comparable to adding a second phone line to your home.

Compare these costs to a typical VHF or UHF only Amateur Radio Service alternative:

Except for perhaps a VHF handheld radio, amateur radio does not compete favorably with cellular for convenience communications. Similarly, Internet service at $19.95 per month provides low cost international communications. And if you just plopped down $2,000 on a personal computer for you and the kids, where will get the money to buy a pricey HF rig? This is a troubling issue.

Undoubtedly you are saying, "But! But! But! But ham radio is not the same as cellular phone service!" We agree completely. The point we are trying to make is to compare ham radio within the context of the broader competitive environment for persons interested in radio communications. We don't think this is an apples to apples comparison either - its more like comparing apples and oranges. But the point remains that this is the competitive environment that vies for the attention of prospective ham radio operators (then again, we know that a lot of ham radio operators carry both HTs and cellular phones). This "competition" also exists for tinkers, not just "appliance operators". Tinkers who might have worked on radio hardware, not work on PC and Internet software for fun.

What Does It All Mean?

Up front we can say with certainty that the ham radio service and hobby of the past century must adapt to the 21st century realities of time, money and technology. To emphasize that point, few businesses leave their product or marketing programs unchanged for decades and continue to flourish. The hobby of Amateur Radio must review its product and its market positioning and adapt, as necessary, to the new market realities of the 21st century. (A market analysis is what we had hoped to accomplish when conceiving the editorial title Is Ham Radio Still Relevant? - unfortunately, the task proved to be quite complex and too large for a couple of people working on the problem as a hobby).

The intent of this opinion is not to shout, "The Sky is Falling! The Sky is Falling!" The goal is to gain recognition and acceptance of the new market realities within which Amateur Radio exists. Then, move forward by discussing where we should go from here. We think a lot of people in the Amateur community don't have an understanding of the "new world order" of communications and the potential impact on ham radio.

To avoid leaving you with a sense of doom, we will mention some of the many positives that exist in the Amateur Radio Service. We can think of several areas where ham radio continues to thrive and succeed and we are excited by recent media attention to Amateur Radio, including on board Space Shuttle flights, and in recent movies like Independence Day, Phenomena, and in upcoming movies like Contact, and in several recent television programs such as the Discovery Channel's excellent Eyes In the Sky. Amateur radio has many positives going for it.

We think there are also many ways that Amateurs can continue to advancing the radio art (see the September 3rd opinion "Software Radios and Digital Bits"). Also, visit the Tucson Amateur Packet Radio (TAPR) web site at http://www.tapr.org and be sure to read their primer on spread spectrum technology at http://www.tapr.org/ss/qexss.html. TAPR is focusing their future digital communications expertise on the development and expansion of spread spectrum technologies in the Amateur service. We encourage you to visit their web site and become involved.

Our sense of community and friendship, and our self training remain strong. Volunteer public service within the Amateur fraternity has been fantastic (but might also be less important in the future as many events now receive free cellular phones, or free two-way radios and "PowerPhones" from organizations like Nextel - although ham radio continues to provide crucial communications services outside metropolitan areas that are unserved by commercial radio phone service). Having lived in rural areas, we can assure many people that ham radio provides essential life saving communications where commercial systems don't dare to tread and where the volunteer spirit of amateur radio operators provides a train corp of volunteers in times of need.

In the U.S., we have grown accustomed to justifying our existence in a pragmatic way by pointing to our involvement in public service, emergency communications, educational opportunities and programs, experimentation and technological advancement. Our mix of justifications may change over the years to come. Many of our pragmatic justifications - like technical advancement or public service communications - could become less important.

We believe that Amateur Radio has a right to exist as radio sport in the same sense that sport aviation and sport boating exist within a highly regulated environment. Even innocent activities like hiking in a state or national forest place you in government regulated territory. There is ample precedent for citizen access to our nations' resources for recreation and personal enjoyment. And in an odd way, where technological advancement is whizzing by, the justification for ham radio as a recreational radio service of personal training, public service, education and experimentation, international goodwill, and as a reservoir of trained radio technicians in times of national need may be all that we really need to explain our purpose in life.

Times have changed (Do you agree or disagree?) Where do you think we should go in the 21st Century?

We want our next editorial opinion to have a list of ideas for furthering Amateur Radio well into the next century. Feel free to send your letters to the editor to vbook@vbook.com. Thanks!

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