I agree with you @Julianlstar wrt Archos: that's possibly a threat to our commons based model.
And as @kaared says 200 euro isn't small pocket money for just anyone. Yesterday we had a Thingsnetwork discussion panel in the Barcelona FabLab and we agreed that the economic management is important. We can agree that deploying such LoRa network is really cheap compared to any other similar network, but the money it costs to set it up and to maintain it operating could (should?) be managed in a reasonable way. Instead of a few people taking all the burden, it might be more interesting to share the costs by the local community. Imagine a democratic organisation like an association, be it formal or informal, where we agree to share the costs by the members. It could be done in such way to assure each person with an antenna has an incentive to keep it operating (and for the community).
Another topic that we discussed was the VALUE that is created. Though related to the costs, it can be seen separately. But fact remains - as @Brendan and others have suggested - that the TTN creates value that will be appropriated by those who use it. Logically it would be reasonable to think of some ways to avoid a mismatch between those who built it and those who use/appropriate the value that is created.
We can imagine schools, fablabs, hackspaces, (some) companies and (some) public institutional buildings as ideal spots for TTN antennas, because of their alignment in interests/motivations with the collective nature of the LoRa network. If we can share the costs between these actors, then we should be just fine I think.
The challenge is to forge such local alliances / communities. It maybe helpful to consider this cost sharing model to make the investment more "fair". What do you think?