For the home owners who dont care about long contract commits and geeky aspects of service A&A I guess serves no purpose, but there is a market, else they wouldnt exist. I was able to sign up to VDSL with a 1 month contract.
In regards to pricing, when I left sky, the difference in price to AAISP was within £1. The major ISPs when they were requiring landline services, if you wasnt on a artificially priced new customer or retentions deal they werent much dissimilar. Of course now they have moved on from voice finally the gap has widened again, but it will close again as every year we have circa 5-10% rises from the big boys.
Time will tell how well FTTP works on AAISP, will they have the same issues Zen has or will the price premium yield a better service.