One of the big reasons for installing smart meters is to introduce "Time Of Use" pricing, ie much higher prices in peak times like the evenings.
This is likely to affect the working poor particularly hard, if they can't easily shift all their cooking and laundry and showers to the off-peak period.
It will be interesting to see if the power companies now crack, and start to roll out evening price surge tariffs in a big way BEFORE they get the majority of households onto a smart meter.
This was NOT their plan!
The plan was to get most people onto a smart meter, introduce TOU tariffs as though they were just an off-peak discount... and then crank the peak time pricing into the stratosphere making it unaffordable for many people. (Ie same technique as trains, with some cheap off-peak or advance tickets, and eyewatering standard tickets.)
Because of the delay, the power companies may have to run a decent non-TOU tariff for the majority of customers (to keep those customers and to avoid the wrath of Ofgem), at the same as they run a TOU tariff available to those who have smart meters.
This would mean evening surge price tariffs would actually get a decent-sized customer trial among early adopters with smart meters.
After that, the rest of us can make a more informed choice about whether we want such tariffs.
TL;DR: a partial roll-out of TOU tariffs would be a good thing to those who genuinely care about customer choice. They may be a bad thing to those trying to steamroller through a non-choice "choice"!