Sharon,

Public chat rooms are really the same type of thing.  The big difference is
that on echo link, you may be talking with two or three, or a dozen people,
and they may be in the cars driving home from work or on their way to
church.  They may be sitting in the living room with a hand held walkie
talkie type ham radio and talking to somebody in England.  Plus, you have to
have the basic license to operate echo link simply due to the FCC
frequencies that the nodes are on.  That is a written test of 50 multiple
choice questions, as I recall, and 75 percent of that is about rules and
regulations and not electronics.

Phil.