content: The automatic updates are the problem. The UK is just of the coast of Europe, and has a population of 64 million. The Cook Islands are a small group of islands 3000 km from New Zealand, with a population of 10,000.. Small, isolated communities simply don't have the same level of infrastructure as large, densely populated regions. Many homes in the Cook Islands don't even have mains electricity, or a connection to a public water main. Getting 100GB fibre connections is pretty low on their priority list. Where I live in NZ, I have a friend who lives just 50km outside our biggest city, in a farming community, whose home relies on a water tank for drinking water, has no cell phone reception, and can only get dial-up internet access. The local telco has said they might get ADSL "sometime in the next 7 years".  Even in our biggest cities I know many people who have 5-6 Mb connections with 40 GB caps. It's an ongoing issue for people in small isolated communities. Software and web services, and websites get designed by people who live in densely populated cites, who think a 100GB fibre connection with 5ms ping is standard, people who think your phone will always have a 3G connection with unlimited data (eg streaming music). And they design their products based on those assumptions. But when you're living in a rural community, on a 256k connection with 400ms ping, a lot of web services are practically unusable. The current move to 'software as a service' like Office Online, and the recent trend for massive incremental updates is making it very difficult for people in rural areas.  The thing is, Microsoft (and other software companies), could've made the updates optional, they could've used time zone and location info to decide how to handle the internet connection, they could've made the peer to peer sharing a user choice. But they didn't, they just assumed everyone lives in silicon valley and has high speed unlimited internet.