Although I keep moving back and forth on the open-access question, I know from experience that rules for open access can cause some problems for the consumer.
One of the factors that AT&T mentions in their attempt to sell their vision of broadband is the notion of one bill and one customer service number for everything including local and long-distance phone service, TV, internet, and wireless. That can be compelling for the most wired.
In open access, on the other hand, one could choose to get all of those things from one provider or pick from a menu of options and accept multiple bills and multiple service numbers.
But here's the problem: Rules for open access can make it nearly impossible to provide the all-in-one option. An example: when I got a DSL line from USWest, I decided to go with the USWest ISP. That gives me one bill and I had hoped it would also give me one service number. It doesn't work that way, as it turns out. To satisfy the rules for open access to their DSL lines, USWest.net (the ISP) is walled off from other parts of the company. If there's a problem, I have to make at least two and usually three service calls because the .net tech support is not able to call or get special access to the line-testing facilities. An independent ISP would give me a separate bill, but would usually provide better tech support because the rules allow them to call into USWest Communications.
The open-access DSL rules managed by a particularly inept company like USWest could lead to extraordinary frustration for most folks who don't want to figure out what part of their service does what and who's responsible.
This factor isn't enough to suggest that open access is a bad idea, but it should be enough to warn us that -- even if the technical challenges that Frank mentions were somehow magically overcome -- that there's far more involved. Rules imposed too early in the process could make the complex managerial interaction among the various elements of broadband service burdensome on the consumer, and thereby slow down its acceptance.
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