69 MHz licence free radio band in Sweden and Finland

I'm always interested to hear about other users of the low VHF bands and it was brought to my attention recently that there was a licence free band at 69 MHz in Sweden.

I had forgotten about this band and when I listened during a recent Sporadic-E opening, I could hear a conversation in Swedish on the calling frequency of 69.1875 MHz.

I thought I'd put together a post to keep a record of the frequencies in use...

Sweden... It seems as if this band which was introduced in 2016 is intended for use by anyone with a need for two way communications without the need of getting a licence. i.e. hunters, forestry workers, farmers, etc or just people who want to communicate like on CB.

There are 8 channels at the bottom of 69 MHz with a power limit of 25 watts. These are in 12.5 kHz steps...

CH1 - 69.0125 MHz
CH2 - 69.0375 MHz
CH3 - 69.0625 MHz
CH4 - 69.0875 MHz
CH5 - 69.1125 MHz
CH6 - 69.1375 MHz
CH7 - 69.1625 MHz
CH8 - 69.1875 MHz Calling Channel

There are another 10 channels further up the band. These have no channel numbers, have a maximum output power of 5 watts and have channel steps of 6.25 MHz.

69.60625 MHz
69.61875 MHz
69.63125 MHz
69.64375 MHz
69.65625 MHz
69.66875 MHz
69.68125 MHz
69.69375 MHz
69.70625 MHz
69.71875 MHz

* * * * *

Finland... Finland has a similar system called RHA68 with channels in the 68 MHz to 72 MHz range.

Channel group A

Channel Frequency Usage Power limit
1 68.100 MHz Roadside assistance organizations 25 W
2 68.300 MHz Motor sports 25 W
3 68.425 MHz Voluntary rescue service 25 W
4 68.525 MHz Motor sports 25 W
17 68.225 MHz Voluntary rescue service 25 W

Channel group E

Channel Frequency Usage Power limit
5 68.050 MHz General use 5 W
6 68.575 MHz General use 5 W
7 68.175 MHz General use 5 W
8 67.500 MHz General use 5 W
9 71.375 MHz General use 5 W
10 71.425 MHz General use 5 W
11 71.475 MHz General use 5 W
12 71.625 MHz General use 5 W
13 70.200 MHz General use 5 W
14 71.025 MHz General use 5 W
15 71.050 MHz General use 25 W
16 71.100 MHz General use 25 W
18 68.375 MHz General use 25 W
19 71.175 MHz General use 25 W
20 71.750 MHz General use 25 W
21 71.900 MHz General use 25 W
22 71.350 MHz General use 5 W
23 71.550 MHz General use 5 W
24 71.575 MHz General use 5 W
25 71.600 MHz General use 5 W
26 72.325 MHz General use 5 W

Links...
1) Swedish 69 MHz Facebook Group (Private Facebook Group - Need to join to see posts)

Low Power Devices on 433 MHz

At the moment, I scan the 70cms band on a pretty regular basis and every so often, the radio will stop on  433.475 and 433.525 MHz. The signal sounds like a weak digital transmission and it's only there occasionally.

I thought perhaps it was due to an out of band signal and the receiver was being overloaded. Having said that, the Alinco 605E seems like a reasonable radio and the front end doesn't seem to be wide open like some of the handhelds.

After a bit of digging, I discovered that there is an allocation for low power device on the 70cms band. It's called LPD433... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LPD433

This is the frequency chart which as you can see goes from 433 to 435 MHz.

I knew that some car key fobs and remote devices were using the band but I hadn't realised it was so extensive. Perhaps that is the reason behind the mystery signals?

What I didn't know was that in Europe, this allows licence free voice communications on 70cms.

"LPD hand-held radios are authorized for license-free voice communications use in most of Europe using analog frequency modulation (FM) as part of short range device regulations, with 25 kHz channel spacing, for a total of 69 channels."...from Wikipedia.

I noticed that Amazon are selling a dual 446 / 433 MHz radio as well...

Considering how easy it is to buy a radio, I wonder will there be more unlicenced operation on the 70cms band in future?