http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-02-03/a ... al/8235502
The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) has reversed its decision to make 40 channel UHF radios illegal from June 2017.
It is estimated there are thousands of UHF, or citizens band (CB) radios on farms and in trucks, caravans and businesses throughout Australia.
Upgrading to 80 channel radios was going to cost some businesses tens of thousands of dollars.
The manager of spectrum licencing policy at ACMA, Dominic Byrne, said the two systems are working well alongside each other so the authority had decided to remove the requirement to upgrade to 80 channel UHF sets.
"These changes were introduced to manage congestion and interference in the CB radio channels," he said.
Truck drivers around the country were taken by surprise by the original decision to make the 40 channel radios illegal, according to Rod Hannifey from Dubbo in NSW."Based on both some dialogue we've had with CB users and some monitoring of the CB channels we've been doing ... we don't think that there's any harm from the continued operation of the 40 channel units."
He said neither truckies nor farmers were aware of the need for the change, and the decision would have affected many who use UHF to keep in touch on the road and around their properties, often using multiple radios.
"There is one in the house, one in the farm shed, there's one on each tractor so they can talk to those people. There's one in each of the utes that operate on the property, there is one in each of the trucks," Mr Hannifey said.