@aesmith - I hear you.
I noticed the AA ethernet services. That must be the answer then.
They just seem to be incredibly expensive compared to the usual IP over DSL. Perhaps some users want to send general ethernet, for all I know they could even be L2-bridging their sites, if anyone even does that any more (used to do so at work over 25 years ago), or maybe they want to use non IP protocols over ethernet, or MPLS.
The thing is, the usual consumer / sme type of offerings have relatively rubbish upstream, so perhaps they are relying on this to put some people off and pay through the nose.
The thing is, those ethernet business links will cost AA in terms of making sure their own core network is up to snuff as they don't want to start getting near to becoming contended / becoming the ‘bottleneck’.
So perhaps they don't want to con everyone by offering very high speed consumer FTTP either with performance figures that are not real because they are not supported sufficiently by the core networks, or don't want to harm everyone else if that new customer is a total hog.
For some reason, I never saw ignitionnet’s helpful post before posting the above. AA's approach is in my view commendable. I do think there is quite a surprisingly wide gulf between two worlds of services, but perhaps businesses have much deeper pockets than I imagine and they just don't care about the costs. I also forgot to mention the issue of SLAs. It may be that the posh services come with serious availability and time-to-fix guarantees from the likes of BT that cannot be got any other way.