I hate to break it to you but services have been routinely blocking residential IPs associated with being part of VPN endpoints for the better part of a decade now. Akamai will even sell you (granted they are just reselling another vendors product) a database to do this.

The Pro really looks like it's struggling for a reason to exist given how much cheaper this will be and the difference in feature set.

Yes, 100%.

If they wanted the policial platforms and had offered to buy them from Warner as standalone for a tenth of the cost Warner would have snapped their hand off.

They need the IP for scale. That is what this is about.

You won't pass Google Play hardware attestation that way, and you won't find a bank in Europe or the UK that doesn't require that to log on to their website within five years.

The DSA European digital wallet spec currently requires Google or Apple attestation, so not for much longer.

And that is mandated by the EU.