Of course it does not harm TTN, to suggest otherwise is very unhelpful.
Providing TTN coverage where it does not exist such as at sea, remote areas and in developing nations is not harmless, it is essential if we are to to seek to democratise access to and for a wonderful community.
Innovators wishing to test and trial their ideas won’t have the option to always afford a private network so to suggest they stay off TTN really does go against what the community is all about. Please correct me if I have gotten this wrong.
Most organisations of the type you describe will want to run low volume trials to limit cost and prove the concept before making any significant investment. Proving a concept on TTN and then switching up to TTI or other private networks is a path we have already taken for duty cycle benefits whilst we still happily enable coverage for budding entrepreneurs by having TTI branded gateways offering TTN coverage.
Justify abuse of the radio spectrum? Unknowingly hurting others? I am not talking about single channel devices, but even those devices are valid in certain use cases but not on a set freq. My suggestion here is that some better traffic analysis might have helped identify the problem sooner and given that the end customer is a Council, why should TTN even be used, a basic SDR dongle would show whats happening locally? If anything, the link you quote appears to demonstrate a private company using TTN to test it’s field trials validity without checking for any private LoraWAN or RAW LoRa.
I’m afraid I just don’t accept your narrative relates to what I have suggested Arjan.
We are a TTI customer for private networks and have always sought to promote it’s development in recognition of the fantastic job TTN has done and continues to do.
As far as guidelines are concerned, we should certainly have them for key aspects that cause pain to other users. After all, the gateways are the property of the owners and spectrum management will soon become an issue unless enforced ADR or duty cycle is baked in. Even some basic signal data analysis can identify packets coming from a long way away (or through buildings, granted) and from devices such as the SF12 “mousetrap” that is spamming two of my TTN gateways, it would be smarter to allow the console user to ban a certain DEV-EUI / ADDR should it be shown to breach ETSI and / or TTN fair use.
The only way to protect an egalitarian network is to offer GW owners some control over the traffic it allows i.e. ban for 48 hours and then double that each time the cycle is abused. I agree that in areas of high node / population density that interference at scale is an issue, I am not proposing using YAGIs in locations where coverage exists.
My key point is that no-one has the answer to all possible use cases and that the use of CE certified radio equipment within published regulatory limits and acceptable use policy is entirely legitimate.
As far as the HAB is concerned, very very cool. https://www.thethingsnetwork.org/article/lorawan-world-record-broken-twice-in-single-experiment-1. Non-standard gateway set up and why would they need to be adjusted? There would have been a distributed local spectrum impact and a heck of a lot of de-dup happening but a great way to validate the technology.
If LoRaWAN can operate from space, then I am pretty sure that some strategically placed gateways with well tuned / matched directional antennae covering large swathes of low or no TTN coverage. would expand the richness and reach of what is a powerful tool and a great community.
Vive le network mon ami.