The main advantage of VHF band is that you can send the signal much farther with the same or less power versus the UHF band. Also you do not have the problem of nightime reflection off of the ionisphere like you have with the lower bands. Think US AM radio and CB radio during the '70's. Analog TV, US FM radio, Ham radio 2 meter band are all in the VHF spectrum. I believe maritime radios are also there.
Larry,
Bear in mind that VHF spans 30-300MHz.
Even over here in NZ, the Government have been very quick to sell off any frequencies that they can.
But on the other side of the coin, VHF is really only "line of sight" communications, you really have to have something like a repeater system for communications to be of any use, especially with terrain variations.
Over here, the VHF band is littered with services that should not even be in there, the first being Television, it takes up a HUGE part of the lower end of the VHF band (around 40-52MHz) which means that radio hams like myself can't use the 6 meter band, it is the same with the 220MHz (1.5meters), because that is smack in the middle of TV2 here.
Around about 75MHz we have the Fire Service and Police, they are going encrypted next month, but what they should be doing is moving to UHF, there is already a repeater network here.
The sooner all these TV services go to digital satellite reticulation the happier we will all be.
Mind you, the frequencies could be sold to someone worse.
We've had to live with the "splatter" from the local Telecom pager tower for the last 10-15 years on 145.700 at 90-180db/m all over the 2 meter band here
