As I started this topic, the single channel gateway is great for testing, but it’s not fully LoRaWAN compliant. For that reason it’s fine to use it now on the staging server, but I think we should not allow these devices in the (soon to be launched) production environment.
You don’t really provide coverage with them, as they will not be able to properly support generic LoRaWAN devices (which are not aware of the type of gateway in their area) that use multiple frequencies and spreading factors. You would have to fix nodes on a single frequency and SF, which is not a good practice, and hard to get rid of later.
If we want to build a reliable and scalable Things Network we need to make sure all devices (nodes and gateways) fully support the LoRaWAN standard. Besides that, gateways are not that expensive. Let’s do it right from the start.