"It's getting cheaper and cheaper for users to innovate on their own," Professor von Hippel said.
In R&C's original work, the model was bounded to ensure that options from the broker are always cheaper for users than an on-demand instance purchased directly from the provider.
It was, in essence, a relatively cheap way for users to get take Skype video conferencing out of their computers and put it on the big screen in their living rooms.
Using other social networks such as Nasza klasa in Poland, Orkut, owned by Google and popular in Brazil and India, or Russian Facebook equivalent Vkontakte for marketing purposes also makes sense, as they are admittedly cheaper for user acquisition, although Facebook's audience is larger.
Gasoline still costs $2 a gallon, for example, and electricity is similarly cheap for many users.
But Facebook can't get carriers to pay for everyone's free Internet access, so it's trying to make it as cheap as possible for users to pay for it themselves.
Other startups demonstrated equally impressive numbers, all within one month of opening operations: dot Learn, which developed a platform to compress online video courses so they're cheaper for African users who pay high prices for bandwidth, has enrolled 500 students in one of its courses.
Aircell has already made Gogo cheaper for cellphone users at $7.95 per flight.
Essentially, 0870 makes it a lot cheaper for iPhone users to call the 08* numbers that a lot of organisations use as one way to generate revenue off their call centres.
It remains unclear, however, how the new rates will affect conservation now that water is significantly cheaper for heavy users.
Parkinson told VICE today that, while he and other advocates are happy about the new perspective on the antidote, he worries that the lack of mention of it being included in a provincial or federal drug plan overlooks the fact that opiates will still be much cheaper for drug users to obtain than the naloxone itself.
