Stress, as well as inexperience, can teach expensive lessons to a broadband operator and its employees. Consequently, broadband operators have become increasingly cautious about making hasty changes to their complex transports. In addition, they need to be more cautious since these transports now carry multiple services, each with its own operational criteria. Trying to resolve one problem in them could in effect render the other services inoperable. In no other issue is this as important as in the case of open access.
Open access demands a level of management beyond most broadband operators.
Never before has the importance of knowing the operational health of their transport been so important. The EOL is traditionally associated with copper-based transport media and it defines a location where the signal terminates. EOL could be a customer home or even a junction where customers could connect. Some broadband operators have been able to deploy EOL monitoring devices with complete transport visibility, most have not been able to because of the expense. Instead, operators only monitor major portions of the transport leaving the remaining portions, which can represent anywhere from 30 percent to 50 percent of their customers, invisible.