Yeah. Now let's see how many of those alleged ±709 575 actually make it on the air at some point within the next ten years. I'm willing to bet it'll be a <20% showing (± <141 915.)
The rest of them will probably just be for an "ego trip" on the holder's part; else their holders were talked into it by somebody, so they'll play around a little bit then find it's too expensive or not what they thought it was, and let their tickets run out.
Inflating the ARRL's figure considerably is the fact that a major computer hacker convention was held in New York City last summer (hint: it was held at the HOtel PEnnsylvania, and yes, that strange capitalisation was intentional) and as I understand, they had a couple HAM testing sessions--see what I said above about getting talked into it by somebody else.
