The FCC has notified manufacturers, distributors and users
of Private Land Mobile radios operating in the high VHF (150-174 MHz) and UHF
(421-470 MHz) bands that they must convert to narrowband transmissions as of
January 1, 2013, according to Newsline. The change, which has been in
the works for several years, will convert those bands from 25-kHz channels to
12.5-kHz channels, essentially doubling the number of available channels on
those two bands.
Amateur radio is not directly affected by the change.
However, many manufacturers build both land-mobile and amateur rigs on the same
basic platforms, so it is likely that future generations of VHF/UHF ham gear
will be built to comply with the new land mobile standard.
