In the last 40 years, activity on 2m has changed a great deal. When G8 stations were first permitted on 2m in the UK, the band was quite busy on FM and SSB.
Since then, people rarely come on just for a chat. These days people can chat, with video, to anyone in the world for free without a licence, on the Internet on a PC, tablet or smartphone. Instead, many people appear on the amateur bands just for contests or when conditions are good. There is a lot more use of digital modes like FT8 which needs very little spectrum. FT8 is ideal for squares hunting, but not for chatting.
If we are totally honest, we do not need the spectrum we have on 2m and 70cm most of the time. For FT8, 100 kHz would be more than enough. Even 3 kHz is enough most of the time. When there is a lift on, we may need more, but 2 MHz at 2m seems very generous. At 70cm, this is even more so, and here we have even more spectrum available to the Amateur Radio Service. Of course, this cannot be discussed with OFCOM or the FCC in case they reduce our allocations. I know the priority is to hang on to the allocations we have.
Personally, I would be in favour of more VHF/UHF bands, but slightly narrower, possibly with a lower power limit. This would encourage research and self training. Many bands could be secondary allocations. Would anyone really is miss 5 kHz off every VHF/UHF band? Be honest!
Without doubt I will be pushing up daisies long before then!
See https://sites.google.com/view/g3xbm4/home/vhfuhfmicrowaves/2m-operation .
When I I got my license in 1998 activity on 2m/70cm was a lot more as now. Repeaters were used the whole day. You could always hear someone talking. This isn't the case anymore. And just like you wrote people have so many other ways of communicating. VHF/UHF is only left for those that want to do experiments or DXing. I doubt there will be many repeaters left in 10 years from now. License costs and electricity bills will be to high for the few that still use them. Personally the only thing I have for VHF/UHF is a couple of HTs. When I do a sporadic talk in the neighbourhood I do that on CB which still is quite populair over here. In the past novice licenses here were only allowed on VHF/UHF but these days they can use the HF as well. It is one of the causes there are not many left. For most people the magic is talking to far away countries and not to your average neighbour. Probabely we have to give up some frequency space in the future. 73, Bas
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