PRS Will go to 80 Channels

[Fourbyfour]

I read in an Aussie 4wd mag that in 2012 an additional 40 channels is going to be added to their existing PRS Band effectively this means channel spacing will reduce from 25khz to 12.5 khz making it likely that in city area's adjacent channel interference could be a problem.
Inquiries with MED spectrum management have indicated they are not only aware of this but also planning the same changes for here. No doubt they have been put under pressure by importers who would be concerned about how long the supplies of 40 channel radio's from Australia will last.

[Fourbyfour]

As a further udate to the above post MED Spectrum mangement has officially announced that the following changes will take place to the CB Bands. 26mhz will continue to be used but we will also be allowed to use the 27mhz cb band bringing us into line with Australia and the USA. PRS will make the change to 80 channels and as stated before this will double the number of repeater channels to 16, the down side of this is that most of the existing 40 channel radio's are not able to have the new channels programmed in. Submissions close on February 11th and the introduction is likely to be before Christmas 2011
Regarding PRS the allowable distance between repeaters has been decreased from 20km to 5km however two repeaters on the same channel still have to be at least 100km apart.

[Fourbyfour]

In Aucks there does seem to be a reduction in the number of repeaters available, Bombay channel 8 is no longer on site and Whitford Ch 7 also seems to be no longer on air this just leaves Klondyke and Awhitu and sometimes Waitakere and less than mediocre performance of Glenfield Ch 1.
Anouncement of a new repeater in the coming weeks.

[Fourbyfour]

At the moment no compulsory change over date has been selected for changing from wide band to narrowband but the feeling is natural attrition will probably account for most wideband radio's in the next 5-10 years, probably most people will make the change to newer rigs just to acceess the additional 40 channels of which another 8 are repeater channels bringing the number of repeater channels up to 16.
Even repeater owners have not been put under any pressure to change to narrow band but rumour has it that two of the Auck's repeaters will be going narrow band very soon.
Having heard narrow band radio's using wide band repeaters the audio does sound slightly quieter, probably as a result of a lower signal to noise ratio.
Listening to a wide band radio on an narrow band radio audio does sound different in that it seems edges of the transmissions are slightly clipped