To provide the extremely high data rates the digital network requires would mean opening up the currently under utilised UHF and microwave amateur bands. This higher band occupancy, as well as the technical contribution Amateur Radio could provide to radio in general would be good reason for our spectrum space to be preserved. The challenge is to get our act together and co-operate to advance amateur radio into the 21st Century, and restore its position as an exciting, leading edge technical hobby with many spin off benefits, both personally and in the art of radio, and to make it relevant in the digital age we currently live in. This challenge lies in many areas, such as sharing the development work, co-ordinating the system, and most important of all, attracting new amateurs with new ideas and skills into the fray, to carry the hobby into the future. It's up to us to adapt to the changes, or go the way of the dinosaur.
Every threat is also an opportunity, if approached from a different angle.
The computer revolution that threatens to make Amateur Radio irrelevant also promises to provide new avenues of growth. And such growth need not mean the loss of something we currently enjoy. For example, packet radio, RTTY and the shack bound PC haven't meant the demise of Morse Code. If anything, they've either had little effect, or enhanced it in some ways. This page, in itself, is an attempt to use the Internet to the advantage of Amateur Radio, by making it available for as many people as possible to read.