History repeats itself.  In the early days of radio, amateurs were allocated 
"200m and down" with the comment that "they won't be able to get out of their 
backyards with that".

When it became clear that HF was useful for long distances, a similar 
philosophy seems to have been applied to VHF and upwards.  And so on.

73, John F5VLF

*********** REPLY SEPARATOR  ***********

On 27/02/2010 at 11:24 Rik Strobbe wrote:

>Warren , Pete,
>
>when back in the mid 90's the initial request for a longwave amateur
>segment (what later turned out to be 137kHz) was discussed, one of the big
>telecom "bobo's" stated that they saw no harm that amateurs would transmit
>there with max. 1 W EIRP as with that power one wouldn't be able to get
>any further than the other end of the town.
>It turned out a bit different, unless you see the world as one big town ;-)
>
>73, Rik  ON7YD
>________________________________