[zinok]

It would be an extremely good solution if it worked as intended. In fact Openreach were not fully independent from BT for most of their existence, and they operated the network in a way which was extremely favorable to BT for a long time.

Thus, the two companies extracted an exorbitant rent for the formerly public goods they controlled. The fact that some of this rent went to inefficiencies of running two separate companies on an illusionary arm's length basis does not really improve matters.