Honestly I'm very sad that the AM broadcast bands (for those unaware there's two in Europe: long wave and medium wave) have been allowed to fall out of use in the UK without regulatory reform. Fair enough the BBC and commercial broadcasters don't want it any more, Absolute Radio stopped on AM because the fine from Ofcom was actually less than running the transmitter estate for example, but there's no reason community/heritage efforts like Radio Caroline need to be subject to a burdensome licensing regime from an era AM was big business when their band is currently almost dead. In my view we should do the opposite, the whole band should be opened to hobbyist broadcasters for a nominal fee and a power limit of a few hundred watts; it's not like most people have the space to put up an aerial that'll go very far on AM.

It feels very wasteful of a scarce resource to leave this spectrum abandoned, especially when it has interesting properties.

> farmers in the US using metal wire fences

More yonder https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/barbed-wire-telephone-...

The UK is not all that small or all that densely populated. Great Britain is the world's ninth largest island. its marginally smaller than Honshu which has a bigger population, and England alone is about the size of Java (which has a bigger population than Russia). I know offhand that it has a lower population density than Sri Lanka

Its a long way from even Cornwall to the North of Scotland, and significantly further between the islands.

Oh, I remember the equivalent service in National Spanish radio, I think up until the 90s. It was called "Servicio de socorro".

I visited a maritime museum which showed a film clip from WW2 about a radio broadcast set up so that merchant sailors could get messages from their family.

I am unable to find an online resource with more info, though I know from general reading and from visiting WW2-era museum ships that sailors were listening to radio shows while at sea. I assume it was all shortwave, back in the time when radio dials included city names.

The UK is unevenly populated and it certainly isn't the one island. In Scotland alone, for example, we have had dozens of inhabited islands varying from one or two people up to thousands. We also have places with low population density due to the Highland Clearances (historical ethnic cleansing) and terrain.

The article is about conventional broadcast, but if two way is interesting, there’s a great project doing digital over HF in rural areas, particularly South America:

https://www.rhizomatica.org/what-we-do/

Lightweight HF rigs and the Hermes Mercury digital modem:

https://mercury.hermes.radio/

There is already a group of people working on meshtastic: https://mesharg.com.ar/ with an active telegram group.

Or wallhop.io

> because we've allowed a system (capitalism) to be created

Before we even discuss capitalism, Argentina's history shows that a large share of its GDP has gone directly to corruption at every level of the pyramid.

you left out the part where the system (capitalism) is creating the technology that people use and makes their life better.

Giving people material goods or technology does make them wealthy. Sometimes it even hurts them https://humanprogress.org/agricultural-subsidies-in-wealthy-... You have to understand poverty and what causes it before you are able to solve for it. Your colonial / dependency mindset will not help.

The article mentions that some messages, like a death notice, are sent multiple times, and gives an example of how a listener can pass on a message to people to others.

A goat comes charging and rams it's horn in to the back of your leg.