> being a ham could actually give you immediate, real-world benefits to you and your community in working around bad/nonexistent ISPs by building your own infrastructure? This would bring a lot more people into the hobby because those skills allow them to solve actual problems they/their community is facing.
Sadly FCC regulation prohibits hams from relaying messages for non-hams, so you're not allowed to build transmission infrastructure which can be used by the general community outside of licensed operators (though operators can still communicate among themselves during emergency situations to help the community). Perhaps this needs to change; I suppose it keeps ham radio networks focused, but prevents them from gaining mainstream relevance and challenging the Internet and corporate cellular networks.
On the subject of challenging ISPs and cellular networks, how is mesh networking doing these days? I don't think there's any meshnets near where I live though.
Sadly FCC regulation prohibits hams from relaying messages for non-hams, so you're not allowed to build transmission infrastructure which can be used by the general community outside of licensed operators (though operators can still communicate among themselves during emergency situations to help the community). Perhaps this needs to change; I suppose it keeps ham radio networks focused, but prevents them from gaining mainstream relevance and challenging the Internet and corporate cellular networks.
On the subject of challenging ISPs and cellular networks, how is mesh networking doing these days? I don't think there's any meshnets near where I live though.