"Amateur" radio

I went to a ham radio club meeting today out of curiosity. At the end of the meeting, we watched a clip from the Jay Leno Show. Mr. Leno pitted two teenage text messagers (supposedly the fastest in the US) against two ham radio operators using Morse code (30-40 years of experience). The competition was to see who could send a message faster. A woman in the audience bet on the text messagers, but the Morse coders won. As Jay Leno said to the text messaging teens, "Sorry, you were beaten by 170-year-old technology."

I learned, on a more serious note, that ham radio (so-called "amateur" radio since individuals, not corporations, are the operators) has vital uses in remote areas and during disasters. In an emergency, cell phones and landlines are often jammed and the only reliable method of communication is through ham radio. Sometimes when several different emergency response teams work together (fire, police, ambulance, etc.), they solicit the help of ham radio operators to communicate between the different teams. The reason is that each team uses its own unique frequency so they need ham radio operators to set up a universal communication system.

Amateur radio operators have also campaigned against BPL (Broadband over Power Line). BPL is the idea that you can transmit broadband internet signals over power lines in RF (radio frequency). It seems like a great idea to bring broadband to rural areas, but the preliminary technology interfered with much of the RF spectrum including fire, police, and ham radio frequencies. The ARRL (American Radio Relay League) convinced the FCC (Federal Communications Commision) to ensure the protection of the RF frequency band in areas where BPL might be deployed.