Before you buy a two-way radio system, know which of the three ACMA paths it will run under: a class licence you never apply for, UHF CB, or an assigned land mobile licence. This guide sets out what each one costs and permits under the ACMA's 2025 instruments, covers HF, VHF, UHF and the 915 MHz LoRaWAN band, and shows how the choice decides the antennas you should buy.

Who this is for: anyone putting a two-way radio system on air in Australia — a farm, a fleet, a mine, a council depot, a security team, a club — and the installers who design it for them. It explains the three legal paths (a class licence you don't apply for, UHF CB, and an assigned land mobile licence), what each one costs and permits as of the ACMA's 2025 instruments, and what each means for the antennas you should buy. It complements our earlier articles on apparatus licences and the land mobile licence.

1. Three ways to be legal

Every transmitter in Australia operates under one of three kinds of authority from the Australian Communications and Media Authority. Which one you are under decides your frequencies, your power, your privacy and your bill.

A class licence is a standing authority that anyone may use, with no application and no fee, provided they follow its conditions. UHF and 27 MHz CB radio, low-power devices such as Wi-Fi and LoRaWAN, and HF outpost stations in remote areas all run under class licences. You share the spectrum with everyone else under the same licence.

An apparatus licence is issued to you for specific frequencies, at a specific location or area, for a fee. For two-way radio this is a land mobile licence. The frequencies are assigned by an ACMA-accredited person so they don't clash with existing users, and the assignment gives you authorised use of that frequency, subject to the licence conditions and the ACMA's interference-management rules — in practice, protection from other licensed users within the coordinated area.

A spectrum licence is the third kind — the carriers hold those for mobile networks — and it doesn't concern a radio system designer, except to note that your 4G/5G router is not licensed individually either: it operates under the ACMA's cellular mobile telecommunications devices class licence, so there is nothing to apply for.

Most private two-way systems in this guide fall under either a class licence or an apparatus licence. The practical question is therefore: can this job be done under a class licence, and if not, what does the assigned licence cost and buy me?

2. The bands, and why the band decides the antenna

Land mobile radio in Australia lives in a handful of bands, and the ACMA's own list of where most networks operate is short: the VHF mid band (70–87.5 MHz), the VHF high band (148–174 MHz), and the 400 MHz band (403–420 and 450–520 MHz). UHF CB sits inside the last of those — the ACMA defines the CB band as 476.4125–477.4125 MHz, with channel 1 centred on 476.425 MHz and channel 80 on 477.4125 MHz — and below all of them is HF — everything under 30 MHz — where 27 MHz CB and long-range outpost radio live.

Frequency sets the physics. As rules of thumb: lower frequencies diffract over hills and through vegetation better and, at HF, reflect off the ionosphere to cover hundreds of kilometres; higher frequencies get into and around buildings more usefully, support more channels, and use smaller antennas. Antenna height, terrain and clutter decide more than the band does — but the band decides the antenna. That last point is the one that shapes a vehicle install, because a quarter-wave whip — the basic efficient mobile antenna — scales with wavelength:

Band	Example frequency	Quarter-wave whip	What that means on a vehicle
HF CB	27.2 MHz	about 2.6 m	Full-size whips are impractical; 27 MHz mobiles use electrically loaded whips that trade efficiency for length.
VHF mid band	80 MHz	about 0.9 m	A tall whip, or a loaded/helical antenna at some cost in gain.
VHF high band	160 MHz	about 45 cm	The classic bull-bar or roof whip; gain models run to 1.3 m.
UHF / UHF CB	477 MHz	about 15 cm	Small enough that gain antennas (collinear "mopoles") fit easily on a roof or bar.

Gain is quoted against two references and it pays to know which. dBi is gain over an isotropic radiator; dBd is gain over a half-wave dipole, and a dipole is 2.15 dBi, so 3 dBd equals 5.15 dBi. Some Australian vehicle antennas quote dBq, gain over a quarter-wave whip on a ground plane — a manufacturer's convention rather than a laboratory reference. When comparing catalogue numbers, convert to one scale first.

3. UHF CB under the 2025 class licence

The ACMA remade the CB class licence as the Radiocommunications (Citizen Band Radio Stations) Class Licence 2025, in force from 1 October 2025 and varied again in July 2026. The rules that matter for design are these.

• No application, no fee. The ACMA's words: you don't need to apply for a class licence or pay any fees.
• 80 channels at 12.5 kHz spacing, from channel 1 at 476.425 MHz to channel 80 at 477.4125 MHz (the band the ACMA defines as 476.4125–477.4125 MHz), FM voice. Spacing is not bandwidth: the licence limits each 12.5 kHz channel to a necessary bandwidth of 10.1 kHz.
• Maximum transmitter power 5 W (carrier power). The licence limits transmitter power on the voice channels but sets no separate antenna-gain or EIRP limit there (only the data channels 22 and 23 carry an EIRP cap), so a higher-gain antenna is permitted — provided the radio remains a compliant, labelled CB transmitter and the installation causes no harmful interference. Antenna gain is the only lever you have, because you cannot turn the power up.
• Repeater channels. Channels 1–8 and 41–48 are repeater outputs; 31–38 and 71–78 are the matching inputs. Talking on a repeater channel where a repeater exists is normal use; running a repeater is not (see below).
• Channels 5 and 35 are emergency-only, and the licence notes that emergency services do not monitor them and that they are no substitute for triple zero.
• Channels 22 and 23 are telemetry and telecommand only — no speech, 5 W with an EIRP cap of 8.3 W, low duty cycle. This is the one legitimate data use on the band.
• Calling and highway channels are conventions now. Channel 11 has been the calling channel by long habit and channel 40 the highway channel; the 2025 licence dropped the old requirement to make first contact on a calling channel, so both are customs rather than rules — still worth honouring.
• No encryption. A CB station must not encrypt speech. Sub-audible squelch codes — CTCSS, and the DCS codes most radios also offer — are filters, not encryption: they stop your radio opening on other people's calls, and anyone on the channel can still hear you. Leave them off on the emergency channels 5 and 35.
• No exclusivity. The band is shared by everyone. Business use is entirely lawful — a great many farms, worksites and small fleets run on UHF CB — but you cannot stop others using your channel, and you must not cause harmful interference to them.

CB repeaters need an apparatus licence. The class licence covers the users, not the repeater. Operating a CB repeater station requires a land mobile licence in the "CB repeater station" category, with the ACMA's issue charge listed at $498 per spectrum access where the ACMA does the frequency coordination, or $28 when an accredited person supplies the assignment certificate, plus the annual licence tax. The repeater licensee must provide a continuously available service to any CB user, must not use coded access to restrict who can use it, must not charge for its use, and must identify with a call sign at least once every five minutes. A CB repeater is therefore a community asset you pay for, not a private channel — which is the key reason businesses that want a repeater usually go licensed.

When UHF CB is the right design

UHF CB is the correct choice more often than radio salespeople admit. It suits a farm, a small fleet, a worksite, a convoy, a volunteer group or an event when three things are true: the traffic is voice, the users can tolerate sharing, and simplex range (radio to radio, or via an existing community repeater) covers the area. The radios are inexpensive, every ute in the district already has one, and there is nothing to renew.

It stops being the right choice when you need any of the following: confidentiality, a channel that is yours at shift change, data beyond channel 22/23 telemetry, a repeater you control, more than five watts, coverage engineered to a standard, or integration with dispatch and phones. Each of those is what the land mobile licence buys.

Designing a UHF CB system for range

With power fixed at 5 W, range comes from three things: antenna height, antenna gain and the pattern that gain produces.

Vehicles. A collinear whip concentrates radiation toward the horizon. On flat country a 6–8 dB antenna such as the RFI CD63 (6 dBq) or the CDQ8000 pack adds real kilometres. In hilly or built-up terrain the same antenna's flat pattern fires over the top of a radio that is above or below you, so a 3–5 dB antenna — the CDQ3000 (3 dBi) or the CDR5000 (5 dBi) — is the better tool. RFI's Q-fit system lets you carry both whips on one base and swap them in seconds, which is why the "city/country" packs exist. A ground-independent antenna such as the CD63 works on a bull bar or a fibreglass canopy; a quarter-wave needs the roof.

Bases. For a homestead, a shed or a site office, height is everything and the antenna is the cheap part. A base collinear like the RFI COL5000-N (5 dBi) or COL8000-N (8 dBi) on a mast above the roofline, fed with CNT-400 low-loss cable rather than RG58 (RG58 loses roughly 25 dB per 100 m at 477 MHz, so a 20 m run costs about 5 dB — 5 W at the radio arrives as under 2 W at the antenna — where CNT-400 loses under 2 dB on the same run; check the cable's datasheet and add the connectors), will talk further than any radio upgrade. Our recommendation rather than a licence condition: put a coaxial surge arrestor rated for the band — the PolyPhaser IS-B50LN-C2 covers 10 MHz–1 GHz — at the point of entry and bond it to earth; the mast will be the tallest thing around.

Handhelds. Accept that a 5 W handheld with its stubby antenna is typically a one-to-three-kilometre device in the open and a same-building device indoors — and that the figure moves with the body in front of it, the terrain and the buildings, so never design a system around a nominal handheld range. Design so that handheld users talk to a vehicle or base with a proper antenna, not to each other across the property.

4. When to go licensed: the land mobile apparatus licence

The ACMA offers six land mobile licence options, covering a land mobile system (bases and mobiles), an ambulatory system or station (mobiles talking to mobiles, without a base), a CB repeater station, a paging system, and an HF land mobile system below 30 MHz. In practice the process is the same for all of them: an accredited person assigns a frequency, issues a frequency assignment certificate and lodges the application; the ACMA issues the licence and bills the annual tax. The current conditions are set by the Radiocommunications Licence Conditions (Land Mobile Licence) Determination 2025, made in September 2025.

What it costs

Two components, both public. The charge for issuing an assigned licence is $28 per spectrum access when an accredited person supplies the certificate (the accredited person's own fee is separate), and renewal is $4 if lodged within 60 days of expiry. The annual licence tax is where the money is, and it depends on the band, the bandwidth and, above all, where the transmitter is: the tax determination prices spectrum per kilohertz per year by population density, so the same 12.5 kHz channel that costs about $2,060 a year in a capital city (12.5 kHz × the $164.99 per kHz high-density rate in the April 2026 schedule) costs about $710 in a regional centre ($57.03 per kHz), around $120 in a low-density area ($9.44 per kHz), and falls to the minimum annual amount of $43.75 in remote Australia. VHF is priced somewhat lower than UHF in the cities and about the same in the bush. Rates are indexed each April. A repeater pair uses two frequencies and is priced accordingly. The ACMA publishes a fee calculator, and we run the numbers for a specific site as part of the assignment — the point to take away is that a licensed channel on a farm or a mine site is not expensive; it is the CBD that pays.

Licences are issued for one year by default and can be issued for terms up to 20 years; renewal is not automatic, and the ACMA sends two notices before expiry.

What it buys

An assigned frequency, coordinated so that nobody else in your area is on it; transmitter power set by the assignment rather than capped at 5 W; the right to run your own repeater, on your own channel, with access control and no obligation to carry other people's traffic; digital voice (DMR, P25, NXDN), including encryption where the equipment and the licence conditions permit it; data and telemetry; and a network you can engineer to a coverage standard and connect to dispatch, telephony and applications. For a business whose people rely on the radio — plant operators, security, emergency response on site, transport — that exclusivity is the product.

VHF or UHF for a licensed system?

Choose VHF high band (148–174 MHz) for open country, forestry, agriculture and long simplex distances: it diffracts over terrain and through tree cover better, and a base on a hill covers a district. Vehicle antennas are longer — a unity-gain quarter-wave like the RFI CD241 or a 3 dB collinear such as the CD29 — and base antennas are substantial: RFI's COL17 is custom-tuned to your assigned frequency, which is exactly what a licensed system should have. The VHF mid band (70–87.5 MHz) still serves rural and government networks with low-profile helicals such as the HPM-RM 77–82 MHz.

Choose UHF (403–420, 450–520 MHz) for towns, industrial sites, in-building coverage, mines and anywhere the fleet spends its time among structures: the shorter wavelength penetrates and reflects its way indoors, the antennas are compact, and the band has room for trunked and digital systems. Vehicle antennas range from a discreet glass-mount to gain whips; for a fleet that also carries UHF CB, a dual-band whip like the RFI CD30 (148–174/400–470 MHz) serves a VHF/UHF dual-band radio from one mount. For links between a repeater site and a base, a directional Yagi such as the RFI YB6-61 (11 dBi) concentrates the power where it is needed and keeps it away from where it isn't — which the coordinator will thank you for. Our VHF & UHF Antennas collection covers all of these, and the Mining Antennas collection has the tunnel specialists.

One design rule survives every band: on a licensed system the assignment is at a specific frequency, so buy antennas tuned to it — a broadband CB whip on a 460 MHz commercial channel wastes power in a mismatch — and give the coordinator honest antenna gain and height, because those numbers go into the interference study that protects you as much as your neighbours.

5. HF — below 30 MHz — for real distance

When the job is a station 300 km from the nearest tower or a vehicle crossing the interior, HF is still the tool. Three arrangements apply.

27 MHz CB remains in the 2025 class licence: 40 channels between 26.965 and 27.405 MHz, 4 W carrier on AM/FM and 12 W peak on SSB, channel 9 for emergencies, and channels 11 (AM) and 16 (SSB) as the traditional calling channels — the 2025 licence no longer requires first contact to be made on them. It is a daytime, tens-of-kilometres band on ground wave with occasional long-distance skip, and a mobile antenna for it is a compromise by nature: the quarter-wave is 2.6 m, so practical whips are loaded and shorter, and installation quality (a good ground and a tuned match) matters more than on any other band. We don't carry 27 MHz antennas as stock lines; ask us and we will source to suit.

Outpost stations in remote areas without a telephone connection operate under the Radiocommunications (Outpost Stations) Class Licence 2022: no application, no fee, up to 100 W peak, on location-specific MF/HF channels in the roughly 2–8 MHz range, intended primarily for contacting the Royal Flying Doctor Service. Base stations in an outpost network need an assigned outpost apparatus licence; the class licence covers the non-base (mobile and portable) outpost stations. It is not a general-purpose HF class licence for a business network — that is the assigned land mobile licence below.

HF land mobile for a private network — a pastoral company, a contractor with a fleet in the outback, a remote camp — is an assigned licence in the "land mobile system 0–30 MHz" category, priced at $518 per spectrum access where the ACMA coordinates it, plus an annual tax in the order of $95 per kHz, so a 3 kHz SSB channel is a few hundred dollars a year. HF assignments also go through international notification under the ITU Radio Regulations, so allow more lead time than for a VHF/UHF licence. Antenna design at HF is its own discipline: base stations use broadband dipoles or NVIS antennas for reliable regional coverage, and vehicles use auto-tuned whips. It is quote-and-design work rather than catalogue work, and we are happy to do it.

6. The low-power class licence: Wi-Fi, LoRaWAN and 915 MHz

Much modern telemetry never touches a two-way radio channel at all. The Radiocommunications (Low Interference Potential Devices) Class Licence 2025, in force from 1 October 2025, authorises unlicensed operation of Wi-Fi in the 2.4, 5 and 6 GHz bands and of LoRaWAN and similar devices in 915–928 MHz at up to 1 W EIRP for the frequency-hopping and digital-modulation transmitter classes the licence names, each with its own conditions. That 1 W is radiated power, so antenna gain counts against it; the trade-off between a gain antenna and transmitter setting is worked through in our companion article on designing an IoT network around a 4G/5G router, along with the 915 MHz antennas we stock for it.

7. Choosing the path: a decision table

You need…	Licence path	Cost	Typical antenna kit
Voice between a few vehicles and a homestead or shed; sharing is fine	UHF CB class licence	Nil	Vehicle gain whip (CD63 / CDQ8000 pack; CDQ3000 in hills); base collinear COL5000-N or COL8000-N on a mast with CNT-400 and a surge arrestor
Your own repeater on UHF CB for the district	Land mobile licence — CB repeater station	Issue charge + annual tax; must be open to all users, no charging	Base collinear at height, duplexer, Yagi links if it is fed from elsewhere
Privacy, a channel that is yours, data, digital, integration	Land mobile licence — assigned VHF or UHF	$28 issue with an accredited person's certificate + annual tax by band and location (from $43.75 to a few thousand dollars)	Antennas tuned to the assignment: VHF CD29/CD241 and COL17; UHF glass-mount or gain whips, COL4000-class base, YB6-61 Yagi for links
Hundreds of kilometres, no towers	Outpost class licence (RFDS contact) or HF land mobile licence	Nil / $518 issue + tax per kHz	Auto-tune mobile whips, broadband or NVIS base antennas — designed to order
Sensors and telemetry, no voice	LIPD class licence (915 MHz LoRaWAN, Wi-Fi) or UHF CB channels 22/23	Nil	915 MHz collinear or dome on the gateway, folding whips on nodes; ≤ 1 W EIRP including gain

Frequently asked questions

Can my business use UHF CB?

Yes. The class licence authorises any person, business or otherwise, with no fee. You share the channels, cannot encrypt, and cannot run your own repeater without a licence.

Is a high-gain antenna allowed on UHF CB?

Yes. The 2025 class licence limits transmitter power to 5 W on the voice channels and sets no antenna gain or ERP limit there. The only radiated-power cap is 8.3 W EIRP on the data channels 22 and 23.

Do CTCSS "privacy" tones make my channel private?

No. Tones stop your radio opening on other people's calls; they don't stop other people hearing yours. Confidential traffic needs a licensed system on which encryption is permitted and a digital radio that supports it — an assigned land mobile licence with DMR, P25 or NXDN equipment is the usual route.

How long does a land mobile licence take?

For a straightforward VHF/UHF assignment the accredited person's coordination and the ACMA's issue are typically a matter of weeks; HF assignments take longer because of international notification. Renewal is annual unless you take a longer term.

Can you do the licensing as well as the antennas?

Yes. Techwave arranges frequency assignment and lodges land mobile licence applications, renewals and transfers, and we design and supply the antenna system to match the assignment.

Where to from here

Tell us what you are trying to cover and we'll tell you which path fits and what it will cost — get in touch, request a quote, or call 1300 168 777. Business customers can open a trade account for project pricing and invoice terms.

Regulatory facts are drawn from the ACMA's published guidance and the instruments on the Federal Register of Legislation as at September 2026: the Citizen Band Radio Stations Class Licence 2025, the Low Interference Potential Devices Class Licence 2025, the Outpost Stations Class Licence 2022, the Radiocommunications (Charges) Determination 2022 and the Transmitter Licence Tax Determination 2025, and the ACMA's land mobile licence and CB class licence pages. Fees and taxes are indexed and change; confirm current figures with the ACMA or with us before budgeting. This article is general information, not legal advice.

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