
No Strong Opposition to 144-146 MHz Reallocation Proposal at CEPT Meeting - themodelplumber
http://www.arrl.org/news/no-strong-opposition-to-144-146-mhz-reallocation-proposal-at-cept-meeting
======
rmason
The Radio Society of Great Britain (RSGB) is leading the charge to stop this
in Europe. Here's where you can help or contribute:

[https://www.change.org/p/rsgb-stop-the-2-meter-
band-144-146m...](https://www.change.org/p/rsgb-stop-the-2-meter-
band-144-146mhz-being-taken-away-from-radio-amateurs/psf/promote_or_share)

Side note: Actually visited the RSGB offices when I got a British reciprocal
call sign prior to operating over there. Absolutely great bunch of people.
Amateur radio is a true bridge between nations, races and sexes.

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temp-dude-87844
This appears to be pushed through by France at the behest of Thales [1], a
large and diverse manufacturer of civilian and military tech that, among other
things, builds UAVs and aeronautical communication equipment.

This portion of the band is allocated globally to amateur radio, and is not
assigned to any commercial or (formal) public safety use. This likely makes it
a valuable and easy target for reallocation for an entity wishing to operate
on it globally.

[1] [https://www.f4fxl.org/update-on-the-threats-on-2m-amateur-
ba...](https://www.f4fxl.org/update-on-the-threats-on-2m-amateur-band/)

~~~
themodelplumber
I wonder why Thales can't target some other band? Are they hoping to jump on
the wide variety of radio gear already made available for this band at low
prices?

~~~
temp-dude-87844
VHF may be desirable because it penetrates objects and buildings well, has
dozens of km of range, and typically propagates line-of-sight instead of
groundwave or skywave.

But the VHF band is nearly full [1] of existing allocations for public and
commercial interest, like FM radio (87.5 - 108 MHz), air navigation (108 - 137
MHz), Marine VHF (156 - 174 MHz), with broadcast television channels slotting
on either side on a variety of frequencies. Here's a US allocation chart too
[2]. The 144 - 146 MHz interval in question is reserved for amateur radio
throughout the world, being one of the very few remaining slots in this band
that has the same exact purpose around the globe. This universality makes it
valuable, both for amateur radio, but presumably coveted by commercial
interests as well.

If they can achieve a reallocation, the frequencies' existing users will be
kicked out, giving them a nice and empty slot in the VHF band. Currently,
operating on this band requires a license, and if it's reallocated, presumably
not many licensed operators would infringe on the band in protest, as they
could lose their license and be prosecuted for unauthorized transmissions.

[1]
[https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:VHF_Usage.svg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:VHF_Usage.svg)
[2]
[https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:United_States_Freque...](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:United_States_Frequency_Allocations_Chart_2016_-_The_Radio_Spectrum.pdf)

~~~
askvictor
Why not go after FM radio frequencies? Dab+ can replace them more efficiently,
like dvb replaced analog tv. Yes, it will annoy drivers of old cars for a
while. But there's a lot more bandwidth there: 20MHz compared to 2MHz for the
VHF in question. And FM is a global range AFAIK

~~~
Aloha
There is 0 DAB deployment in the US

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throw20102010
The loss of this band would really hurt ham radio. The cheap Baofeng VHF
radios that use this band are probably second only to the RTL-SDR for enticing
people into the radio hobby.

It would be pretty easy to move all the current VHF activity up to UHF if you
have the equipment, but a lot of tech class (or the European equivalent) hams
that only have a cheap handheld are going to need to buy a new radio. That’s
going to be a bummer.

~~~
m4x
It's "easy" to move, but not cheap - particularly for all the clubs which have
thousands invested in 2m repeater hardware.

There are many thousands of repeaters around the world, worth hundreds or
thousands of dollars each, mostly in remote locations or on private land, and
almost entirely funded and maintained by volunteers.

The loss of this band would definitely hurt ham radio!

~~~
Aloha
Where do you move to? the bands in the states are full

~~~
throw20102010
This varies on the region. 70cm here in the midwest and mountains is nearly
empty, and 2m isn’t completely full. If you combined both you would have an
exciting band. The downside is that there won’t be a whole lot of space to
expand in the future. I’m sure that on the east coast it’s a different story.

But gaining an exciting and active band is probably not worth losing 2m, and
I’m sure that once 2m is gone in Europe it will be on the chopping block in
the USA.

------
Quipunotch104
The French are sell-out idiots. 6 out of 12 representatives are from Thales
who has wanted more frequencies on the air band for years because of their
drone business and also have interest on the space industry. The Galileo
project should've never even be close to 1.2GHz but apparently they need the
band and it's too late to change. Since filtering is too expensive it's
cheaper to just take away from ham community... This said, if they do get it
their way there's gonna be a lot of interference on 2m.

------
i_am_proteus
This coming, ironically, only a few days after the first 2m transatlantic QSO:
[https://hackaday.com/2019/06/22/a-two-metre-bridge-across-
th...](https://hackaday.com/2019/06/22/a-two-metre-bridge-across-the-atlantic-
for-the-first-time/)

------
kregasaurusrex
Not only limited to amateur radio novices who are new to the hobby; during
emergency/disaster relief, the 2m VHF amateur bands are the among the most
used bands due to how inexpensive the radios are. By creating an ad-hoc
network used as a failsafe when cell towers and internet services could be
offline for an indefinite period of time, civilians are able to save lives
when police and and EMS are allocated at their capacity. I also personally
enjoy using these bands because it's able to travel well throughout a medium-
large city fairly well on a clear night.

------
BuildTheRobots
It seems like a bad thing for a few reasons and is going to detrimental to ham
radio users - especially the more novice ones.

From a purely practical level it seems like a crazy idea, for no other reason
than the huge amount of cheap equipment that can broadcast over it. I'd
describe it as almost too polluted to be used reliably for anything else.

Unless I'm entirely misunderstanding the article, this seems really serious.
Like contact your radio clubs and lodge official complaints serious. Can
anyone shed more light please?

~~~
JWLong
Most of the radio clubs here in the US have been griping about this for the
last three months. It's just a question of how much pull the european clubs
have.

------
pmoriarty
Don't think this will be the last amateur band to be privatized either.

Commercial entities and the politicians they have in their pockets will keep
asking and getting more and more.

~~~
drmpeg
The next band to be targeted is 3450 to 3550 MHz (of which, 3450 to 3500 MHz
is allocated to Amateur Radio).

[https://www.lightreading.com/spectrum-now-act-takes-aim-
at-m...](https://www.lightreading.com/spectrum-now-act-takes-aim-at-mid-band-
spectrum/d/d-id/752390)

~~~
gormandizer
I never like to see Amateur Radio lose spectrum. But if I'm not mistaken
3300-3500 MHz is currently allocated to Amateur Radio. So this would still
leave hams with 3300-3450 MHz.

~~~
drmpeg
That's correct. It would not be a complete loss. More like when 1215 to 1240
MHz and 2310 to 2390 MHz was lost after WARC-79.

~~~
rsuelzer
Except for the fact that Channel 1 bleeds into almost all of the amateur 2ghz
band. The center frequency puts the left side of the channel into our band and
has made it a mess.

For those interested in how these frequencies are used by HAMs check out
[http://www.arednmesh.org](http://www.arednmesh.org). We hack routers and wifi
point to point links to operate on those frequencies to build out large mesh
networks.

------
throw0101a
The official proposal if anyone is interested:

> _The decisions of previous conferences have introduced some restrictions to
> the use and have imposed constraints on the development of aeronautical
> mobile applications within some existing mobile allocations traditionally
> used by the aeronautical mobile applications._

> _At the same time, the number of manned and unmanned aircraft equipped with
> sensors has grown significantly in the past 20 years together with the need
> of bidirectional low to high data rate communications. Aeronautical
> applications like fire surveillance, border surveillance, air quality and
> environment monitoring, traffic monitoring, disaster monitoring, terrain
> modelling, imagery (visible, infrared, radar, meteo), video monitoring
> require non-safety communications between various types of aeronautical
> platforms._

> _Consequently the need of non-safety data communications between various
> types of aeronautical platforms increases and so the need for new frequency
> bands._

* [https://cept.org/ecc/groups/ecc/cpg/cpg-pt-a/client/meeting-...](https://cept.org/ecc/groups/ecc/cpg/cpg-pt-a/client/meeting-documents/file-history/?fid=51940)

------
xvf22
How does this play out for amateur satellites operating in the 2m band? Do
they have to stop broadcasting over Europe?

~~~
throw20102010
Not really. The space over Europe isn’t governed by Europe, they’ll just have
to tolerate the transmissions. But lots of ham satellites are repeaters, so
they’ll probably get a lot less activity over Europe, and nearby hams will
probably get fewer European contacts.

