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To: Ted Schnur who wrote (9242)	5/7/1999 3:47:00 PM
From: ahhaha	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 29970

Why should I rip apart what is obviously true. I was only thinking in terms of content, advertising, and commerce synergy, but you have extended the concept to the operational front. The principle is, where there is contention, do not contend, rather look for a way to concede, and that way you prosper way beyond what you would have achieved in vanquishing a prospective opponent. Convert opponents to allies and then whom is left against which to contend? I sent that reply to you because I knew you could handle it. The knowledge is in you. You opened the door which Frank has unlocked. What Armstrong, not T, did was make secret deals in smokey rooms behind closed doors. None of the companies involved are going to like that approach since it leaves them in doubt, the situation is opaque, nothing has changed, and confrontation from all quarters is coming. No one is to blame but Armstrong. We, three, have come up with a better way than all the resources of these cooked deal big shots. The details are everything and maybe we can extend this concept with the help of the thread to address all the eddies and currents of working interest and equal representation. We have to figure out who should be doing what. How exactly is this mechanism of "sharing", or exchange of interests, to be structured. No company should be left to be responsible for the failures of others which is the usual structure of socialist sharing, and every company should benefit to the extent of their investment and effort. This is what T should have been spending time developing instead of this shifty manipulation which will garner only resentment and confrontational destruction so popular among cable tv SOs.

To: Ted Schnur who wrote (9242)	5/7/1999 3:48:00 PM
From: RTev	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 29970

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.