Last time I was camping in North Anglesey I was chatting to friends in Manchester, some people on the Isle of Man and some people in Ireland.. It's not all about worldwide communication but also about other things..
Packet radio was a great tool before the internet became popular a few years later being able to send emails to other hams all over the world in the early '90's. Today I like messing around with APRS and real time tracking via a GPS attached to the radio which sends bursts of telemetry at the end of speech. People still use forms of data communications long since dead to the outside world as they do work great on HF. Others do slow scan or fast scan TV.. They might point an antenna array to the moon and use that to bounce a signal off (or even one of the many ham radio satellites in orbit) and will speak using VHF/UHF (normally restricted to 20-60 miles) to talk to peopple all over the planet. There's even a ham radio set on the ISS that's regularly in use.
It's not just about how far you can get.. Instead its all the different things you can do with a radio
