What is the status of the TTN Gateway?

Gateways
92

Yes, that still holds.

1 Like
93

Thanks for being open about this and joining the discussion. This is totally understandable from the perspective when seeing the pledge as a purchase from a existing organisation. In this case it is different we feel KS is a platform to share the risk and gains of bringing a product to the market that is not yet there. In this case even supporting a movement. And ofcourse I fully understand that any unmet expectations result in the a lesser credibility.

When stating it is not an option. What do you see as an alternative?

94

We believe the rule of the game is that a KS meant to share the risk and gains of brining a product to the market. This inherently means that our mistakes and wrong doing will reflect on the backers. But also our investment and extra efforts will be the gains of the backers. It matters what perspective you choose here. Was your assumption your were a sole consumer as a backer or were you part of creating something. Again we did not meet expectations and estimations. We invested heavily to make sure the products our out. And we decided not to give up. So we do not see this as changing the rules of the game, but more like changing circumstances.

With regards to the UNOs and Nodes we shipped them from The Netherlands and the investment was smaller to do this. We did it from our own pockets. But we agree it might have been better to be consistent. It is not our intention to give anybody an unfair advantage.

To be clear. In a perfect world we would give away the gateways for free. But this just comes at a cost and VAT is part of that. Across this KS project and across the whole of TTN we have done serious investments and this is one we feel we should share with all of us.

1 Like
95

Next to the individual replies to your concerns about the topic of the VAT charge upon delivery I would love to hear about some solutions you might find for this problem.

So first would you think that this would withhold a significant amount of backers to get their products and put up a gateway. If so, what would be the solution. Wait a bit longer with the shipment of the batch and take time to gather extra funds? Make the payment optional and hope this will not damage the organisation?

Let me know. And looking forward to suggestions that help us all.

96

give ’ TTN credits ’ for the extra cost some of us did not calculate when signing for the KS.
TTN credits can be used for example, to buy extra data storage or used for the conference or other future events / products / services.

1 Like
97

Giving something in return on the platform would be a nice idea. Maybe things like:

  • 2 years of TTN gateway firmware updates?
  • The costs will be discounted from the conference tickets?
  • A year of unlimited storage in the TTN console?

What do you guys think?

1 Like
98

With all my respects, the first thing I would do is to clarify the volume of the problem. The problem concerns only those pledges that came from inside the EU. Even better, it concerns only those that pledged as private persons (to be exact, as entities not registered under VAT anywhere in the EU). Therefore the real “sufferers” are those European private persons that pledged exactly 200 Euros, because with all the others you can possibly “bargain” with the number of The Thing Uno-s or The Thing Node-s they will get as a compensation for not having to pay VAT for themselves on the gateway (to be exact, for having the price of the gateway with VAT included).

Shipping from Hong Kong is not an issue either; Mouser (https://eu.mouser.com/) ships from the US, but has a VAT registration in France, so they can deliver as if they where EU companies to anywhere in Europe. With a proper arrangement with the shipping company, you can avoid the kind of problems Charles has mentioned before.

NB.: As a real first step, I would discuss the problem with my accountant or a good tax advisor because I am sure The Things Network is not the first European entity facing these kind of problems.

99

For me, when I stated “the pledge includes hardware I meanwhile don’t even care for”, I was referring to the nodes, not to the gateway. Also, I never pledged with a use case or direct benefit for myself in mind, but I just wanted TTN to come alive.

Even more: just some shiny hardware without a coordinated community network is close to worthless, and I never figured what needed to be done for that when I pledged over two years ago. So, I appreciate that my €340 pledge for four pieces of hardware is not just profit for The Things Industries (if any), and I assume it not only contributed to developing and manufacturing the hardware but also to the software, hosting and awareness of LoRaWAN in general. I’ve long forgotten the day that I paid my pledge, and making TTN pay or compensate the VAT and customs duties now would probably not benefit the community.

So, giving it some more thought: I’m not happy we’re likely to be charged considerable extra fees, but I’m willing to make that extra investment if there are no other options.

4 Likes
100

Besides some extra bucks for custom, postage and VAT: Is it assured that it is legal to import the TTN gateways to every country?

The gateway is an electronic product with RF transceiver. Ususally there are regulations on RF products depending on national standards, e.g. “CE” confirmation for Europe, or “FCC” confirmation for US. If gateways are directly sent from HongKong, the buyer is the importer. That means the buyer is responsible to declare that the product meets all national regulations.

1 Like
101

The ball is in your court. I pay either way.

Is the firmware (update) payed? Until now we have had only discussion and speculation about the gateway software. It seems as if there is more information, even a decision that we are not aware of. As a stakeholder I expect to be informed about this. What is the current status on this topic?

1 Like
102

@wienkegiezeman
I’m one of thoses that ordered via “pre-order through website” in Oct 2016 (Order 878).

Its great to hear
“…So the products were all created in one batch…”
but does this apply only for Kickstarter backers?
Or can I expect a lovely email telling me when I will be getting a shiny new gateway :slight_smile:

Edit
Please note, I ordered and paid before the “same terms as kickstarter” restriction was added to the shop website
https://web.archive.org/web/20160623204823/https://shop.thethingsnetwork.com/
Also, the order email (and order process) never refered to kickstarter or anything else as being a risk of non-delivery. My understanding is that some of us “pre-order” backers (like myself) do have the right of a refund against TTN if we so wish.

1 Like
103

No info yet. But there is no model yet in place to subsidise so status is unclear. We expect to be updating regularly.

1 Like
104

This discussion are only about KS orders as they not yet included VAT. Shop orders already paid VAT.

105

With ‘firmware’ I take it you don’t mean ‘packet forwarder’? Because like @johan said here ‘there is no such thing as a premium user on TTN’ and that the packet forwarder would remain open source.

Also, the reply of @shaitjema1 here gave the impression the firmware for the gateway itself would also be open source?

2 Likes
106

It will be open sourced.

1 Like
107

It is a bit of a surprise, since it was explicitly mentioned that there was a flat fee of (in my case) EUR 50 added to the pledge amount to account for both shipping costs and VAT.

And to be honest, as a private person who has no commercial interest in LoRa it’s already quite a large amount of money to spend. The same goes for the conference, which sounds really nice to get the knowledge but the company I work for doesn’t benefit directly from me getting that knowledge (and certificate) so it’s all out of my own pocket (also adding VAT). I’m still considering it though for my own benefit, never hurts to learn and looks good on CV.

So yeah, I definitely want TTN to succeed and think the Kickstarter (and pre-order) gateways being maintained will help a lot but it is a blow after waiting for so long (which I admit is not surprising to a KS backer). Any estimates on the possible extra costs in shipping/handling/VAT for the EUR 290+50 level combo? (Netherlands in my case)

2 Likes
108

Tried to find out customs duty for importing from china to EU country, looks like it will be 0%.
So only national VAT and postage will have to be paid, so could result in extra amount of 50-80€ ?

http://ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs/dds2/taric/measures.jsp?Lang=de&SimDate=20171109&Area=CN&MeasType=&StartPub=&EndPub=&MeasText=&GoodsText=&Taric=8517610000&search_text=goods&textSearch=&LangDescr=de&OrderNum=&Regulation=&measStartDat=&measEndDat=

109

Based on statement from Kickstarter, the shipment and VAT are already paid for EU. This was clearly stated.

Do I have to add 21% VAT inside the EU?

No actually. We have added that inside our worldwide flat shipping fee. We made the decision to compensate the difference (high shipping costs outside the EU but no VAT vs lower shipping costs inside the EU but with VAT) into one flat fee shipping cost.

Several of the well known names of shipment (UPS, DHL…) charge a significant extra to handle VAT and other taxeses.

I noticed a lot of shipment out of China use some proxy in Europe, so the parcel makes its last part alone, but handled in bulk from Asia to Europe. Wouldn’t be a idea to explore ?

110

Thanks for providing us with all this feedback. We will always have an inside out bias. So we need this.

We decided that we sent out the shipments with VAT and give consumer backers the possibility to claim that back with us. We will also explain in the same mail why paying VAT could be interpreted as being fair as the reasoning behind including the VAT after 2 days launching the campaign was with regards to the high shipping costs. As we are now shipping everything from China because of the unexpected high number of orders, this is no longer valid.

We will also make clear that making us bare more investment for this project is a risk for the a sustainable The Things Network. We are taking a loss on each gateway. And now the success actually is turning against us because the more gateways the more loss.

Hope the transparency and the gesture for consumer backers is appreciated and we can get on with building a global collaborative IoT data network.

4 Likes
111

Can we change our pledge ? Instead of claim back VAT, I prefer to loss a things-uno and/or a things-node (and keep gateway only).

1 Like