A very similar thing happened in the land-line phone biz. MA Bell's goal for dial tone uptime was 99.999% (5 nines), and that included power outages (thus central offices powered by huge lead acid battery banks). And when dialing 911 the call was routed to the local emergency service center and they were provided with a complete address. Then cell phones hit, and their reliability and voice quality was way less than land line, but much more convenient . 911 didn't work at all (now kinda does). Many cell sites are not battery backed up. Then VoIP came along...and with it we lost all uptime guarantees and much of the voice quality (okay, it's a lot better now than in the beginning), and 911.It's status quo thinking. Because we have a just-in-time grid, we must always have a just-in-time grid.
If you can focus on 99% and make it cheap, people are going to be a lot more comfortable with restrictions and higher cost for the 1%.
But it showed that as long as the price was cheap, and/or convenience is high, people will put up with a lot that we used to consider sacrosanct.