I agree saleability is a big issue if the only co-operation is the 1% regulated air time. One interesting aspect of LoRaWAN is the ability for the Network Server to manage various communication parameters. I think to manage the physical limitations such as this LoRaWAN network servers will need to co-operate in the way they manage their respective devices.
It would be interesting to run some simulations regarding scaling with managed devices (not naïve and random as per this study). As gateway density increases more devices would have the opportunity to shift into higher speed modes and with optimised power modes supplying only sufficient power to reach the closest gateway regional collisions should reduce.
I think part of the attraction of LoRaWAN as an organisation is that is has a chance to specify how the cooperation between network severs could work to optimise the network. It’s a big task in a free bandwidth spectrum but there are measures that could be taken against uncooperative devices eg not forwarding traffic that is not optimised etc.
Hopefully the LoRaWAN certification will mature to include such management recommendations. However it will remain difficult to live with ‘uncooperative’ LoRa devices. ie those who just use the PHY and don’t participate in a collaborative management. I suppose though in the end it’s in everyone’s best interest to participate in the management otherwise all connections become unreliable to the point of unusable. So perhaps mutual self interest will be enough to ensure the bandwidth is sufficiently well managed. Will certainly be interesting to see it evolve.