There seem to be a fair-few Meshed gateways with only AS923 - some of them have prime coverage in key areas around Sydney, Newcastle and Lake Mac. Are there any plans to assist with the AU915 cutover for those devices?
@CoreElectronics It depends on the end-customer. Some gateways are used primarily for internal projects (although on the public network). They are unlikely to start supporting AU915. Other gateways that are primarily for the purpose of providing coverage to the community will already support AU915.
- Lake Mac gateways (the ones provided by Meshed) all support AU915 and AS923
- We don’t have any customers/gateways in Newcastle. The nearby gateways owned by DPI are single-band gateways for a private project on a private network, but they are dual-homed so that they provide benefit to the community as well.
- Many Sydney gateways support AU915 - the ones in the West for instance, but some of the older ones, nearer CBD do not. But there are a lot of non-Meshed community gateways in Sydney so both band plans will likely thrive.
Thanks @Maj, though could you confirm if the Charlestown gateway in Lake Mac is dual region?
It is probably the most important TTN asset in the region given the 131M elevation and deep coverage into Newcastle + Lake Mac.
Sorry, you’re right. I was thinking about the recent deployment of a bunch of gateways around Lake Mac. They’re all dual band.
The original 3 gateways installed circa 2018, one of which is Charlestown is single band AS923.
Maj,
your “Private Network Private Project” DPI statement appears to be fundamentally incorrect.
I have read the tender docs for several of these gateways where a key requirement was to support community projects.
Now you are saying the bucket of cash received under these tenders was not at all to support the local communities.
Explains why the DPI gateway at Loomberah has never worked, because it was never fit for the purpose in which you guys were initially paid.
Thankyou for this insight, it does come across as meshed is very All-For-Profit but wears a disguise.
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Thanks for the conversations @Maj. It is hard to read in-between-the-lines of your replies from a TTN community interests perspective, though it is understandable that Meshed has commercial interests with AS923 given the Meshed AS923 nodes/devices deployed around the country. Quite the predicament.
@TonySmith raised some interesting points. Though it does seem the deeper you dive into the mechanics of LoRaWAN, a single frequency plan offers more benefit for community interests. From the initial discovery that TTN exists, through to device deployment. Not forgetting the more-human aspects such as education. The single frequency plan model has been well proven elsewhere around the world.
More bandwidth is an interesting coexistence opportunity. But is it worth scaling a deployment model given the challenges of AU915+AS1+AS2 thus far?
If AU915 becomes the standard, as indicated by the removal of AS923 on the Australian TTN page, then we will certainly do our part to promote AU915 and the switchover. Will be following this topic with genuine interest, along with developments on the Australian TTN page.
If it stays as-is, then so be it… a good conversation either way.
We’ll have our work cut out for us in this region!
The commercial undertones of Meshed are strong, though it just goes to show the diversity that TTN attracts. Perhaps the best community interests move they made was listening to the early feedback surrounding AS923/AU915 and making the switch to dual plan gateways.
It will be interesting to see how Meshed / @Maj approach legacy AS923-only gateways in high-value locations in the months to come given the removal of support on the Australian TTN page.
Your post raises some concerns about how funding of gateways has occurred in the past and whilst it has been flagged, I have restored it as it has public interest issues.
However the moderators aren’t up for having this topic get contentious so please keep discussion to provable facts and not feelings please.
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Sorry, but I feel your post is at best disengenous, at worst bordering on offensive and I would recommend you look at TTN AU history and evolution, and the contribution Meshed-AU has made, then reconsider your words/sentiment.
@Maj and the crew have deployed many many GW’s across the country and as far as I am aware most if not all have been enabled for Community use - irrespective of band plan - unless specifically locked down for private use cases. Like many on TTN globally Andrew has looked at how a pro bono community activity can sit alongside a commercial enterprise and, successfully in my view, has done a fine job enabling both a business and a community initiative. The paid for stuff helps fund the community stuff and on that basis I think of Meshed as a smaller clone in some part of the larger TTI/TTN model. Yes some bits may be broken or may not work as all desire (yes, a bit like TTI/TTN!) and activity and direction may not always be driven by or for community or for individual users needs & benefit (its a commercial enterprise after all!), but we/you do get something out of this - and ‘for free’!.
Many, myself included, have deployed a lot of TTN infrastructure (GW’s in my and other cases, GW’s & back end services in the case of Meshed), and we may try to make a little back on the side whilst offering it out for free to our local communities… I venture Andrew and Catherine & the Meshed team have just been a bit more successful scaling up than most!
I just looked up through Forum search and the only post it showed calling out ‘Loomberah’ is yours just now…no posts with comments or cries for help or asking if there is a problem with the GW - If deployed for Meshed commercial purposes but set open for community use then provided Meshed see it doing what they (and potential their client/funder) need they are unlikely to even know it doesn’t meet your specific needs. Have you raised this with them? Have your taken the next most obvious step of deploying one in that area to cover for yourself?
I’m sure there will be more than one GW that doesn’t meet community needs, or only partially covers what might be desirable, but that does not justify your inflammatory statement. Remember Meshed-AU isnt TTN AU but rather a major contributor and a local Partner, enabling for all. If you are concerned then you have the right to dip into your own pocket, or to carry out local fund raising, and to subsequently deploy GW’s & supporting infrastructure that you feel better suites your needs. Remember, you are the network, lets build thing together…and dare I say not start throwing rocks at each other!
BTW anyone reading this who missed Catherine’s presentation to the recent TTConf virtual sessions may want to catch up with this video 
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@Jeff-UK thanks for your support and for providing a little perspective. Yes, I think some posts here are getting a little aggressive. If my answers don’t make sense, just ask me to clarify, or ask for more detail. If I’m wrong, I’ll correct myself (as I did earlier today). I have nothing to hide and neither does Meshed.
So lets get one thing clear… When I eat food it is bought with the money I have earned by working my ass off to get paid a wage by Meshed. Meshed can pay me only when it makes a profit. Ergo, Meshed is a for-profit company. Meshed has no “commercial undertones” as someone said above. We wear our undertones on our sleeve. Take a look at our website and you’ll see that we are very public about what we do and who our customers are. I’m proud that we have a profitable company.
But that doesn’t mean that everything we do is for-profit. We give back to the community too. For instance:
- We have hosted the TTN Public network in Australia since 2017 at our own cost, and provided services to keep it running day and night, and weekends, at no cost to the TTN community. We didn’t have to do that. TTI would have hosted it regardless, but we saw that we could do a better job of it, since Amsterdam are asleep when we need the network most.
- We ran many meetups in Sydney in the early days of TTN and LoRaWAN to generate interest and community engagement.
- We speak at events and visit local TTN communities when we travel
- We ask our customers to spend a little extra on a dual band gateway in order to provide AU915 coverage to for the community (most gateways, since 2018)
When we started Meshed there were 2 gateways in Australia (Sydney, Perth). We didn’t pay ourselves anything in those days. We just had a crazy idea about working with our commercial contacts to build a free Australia-wide community LoRaWAN network based on what TTN had done in Amsterdam and we ran with it. It worked.
AMA
Maj
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If you can see a gateway on the TTN map then it’s a public gateway, for the purpose of supporting the local community, but that gateway is likely to be primarily supporting a private use case. It is the customer’s decision how to deploy their gateways.
Careful with your words. Meshed was not engaged to provide a gateway at that location. Presumably you are referring to someone else.
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There were iconically 3 frequency plans listed at one stage for this region. It’s fair to say this has imposed challenges on schools, makerspaces, DIYers, less so for commercial devices deployed alongside the networks.
The migration to V3 has the unique opportunity to promote a common way forward nationwide. Whatever shape that takes, region consistency would be nice and inline with the open source efforts / origin ideas of TTN.
Looking forward to it.
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That’d be me. And I was celebrating how the TTN attracts diversity. Re-read it.
@CoreElectronics Apologies if I mis-understood the intent.
I took it to mean that you thought we were hiding our commercial intentions.
Oh well, I’ll wear my mistakes on my sleeve too 
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Hi Maj.
Please don’t get aggressive with your language. Meshed does run the gateway i referred to at Loomberah. when Meshed is advertised on all these gateways, am I to assume it is some sort of other Meshed? or it is owned by someone else like the DPI. it does not say DPI Tamworth.
the gateway is located over near Loomberah, which is near Tamworth.
We only know that gateway as “Tamworth” (as defined by our customer). I haven’t heard of Loomberah before and they have never referred to it as that. My response would have been different if you’d referred to it by name.
As far as I’m aware it is fully operational and has been since it was installed. If you have reason to believe otherwise, please let me know why.
The party that is entitled to make that assertion disagrees with your point of view.
Looks like you are facing similar challenges to us, @Scobber. Newcastle/Lake Mac had at one stage AU915, AS923-AS1, AS923-AS2 all operating in the same region. While we’ve been able to settle with AS923 in this region, as you can see in this thread, some of the most prime located Meshed gateways around town remain as AS923-only.
In Tamworth, the Meshed gateway appears to have the second-best altitude of the five located (4 belong to others). Sadly, the Meshed gateway appears to be AS923-only. The knock-on effect is going to be disgruntled end-users such as yourself who are left wondering why it doesn’t work as prescribed. Makers, engineers, educators and students will find that projects work on one side of town but not the other. If it’s anything like it was for us + Meshed, the only way forward is for the whole Tamworth TTN community to unify with a non-compliant LoRaWAN region configuration.
The other 4 Tamworth community gateways are operating on AU915 (which should be working fine if you are following Australian region LoRaWAN specificaion):
Though given the outcome of recent decisions:
Once V3 is in motion, if the Meshed gateway is still AS923-only then it might be worth getting in touch with the local council (assuming they are the owners) to have the gateway removed from the TTN map (citing this conversation and the Australian TTN Page which capture the community consensus that AS923-only gateways are actively discouraged)
I believe meshed are contracted to administer/run this site on behalf of NSW Government for NSW Department of Primary Industries (I also remember, but could be mistaken, that there was a clause that it had to be usable by the community in the tender doc). I did try to track down copy of the awarded tender document this morning for clarification, but it seems to have gone missing from the public register records right now.
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Correct.
Without trying to find that doc and specific clause, that sounds about right.