When you join with the program, you get discount vouchers for a set of flow cells and reagent kits, and these vouchers are also handed out for various other reasons (e.g. conference talks, publications, popular community wiki posts). The discount is frequently for the total cost of kits, but participants still need to pay for shipping.
Since they opened up the commercial space after the London Calling conference in May, ONT's stance has been that people who pay will get ordering/shipping priority over those who are getting shipping-cost-only kits and flow cells. I expect that this means there are a lot of small labs around the world getting frustrated waiting for their first kits to find out if the platform is useful at all, while big facilities with deep pockets get the lions share of the sequencing capacity.
Since they opened up the commercial space after the London Calling conference in May, ONT's stance has been that people who pay will get ordering/shipping priority over those who are getting shipping-cost-only kits and flow cells. I expect that this means there are a lot of small labs around the world getting frustrated waiting for their first kits to find out if the platform is useful at all, while big facilities with deep pockets get the lions share of the sequencing capacity.
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