5 ms·

Hard to tell from the summaries. I hope this addresses ISPs too. Comcast, AT&T seem to operate like a cartel.

by gsmo 5y ago

ProjectArcturis 5y ago
It doesn't.
jeffbee 5y ago
Spoiler: they don't! The ACCESS act, for example, applies only to services with > 50 million MAU and either sales or market caps over $600 billion. Since there has never been any company with $600 billion annual sales, it applies to only 7 companies in the world, and really only 6 because I don't think Saudi Aramco really qualifies.
- ethbr0 5y ago
  Personal opinion? Good. The restrictions and remedies here seem fairly harsh. Of the sort you'd only want to cover monopolies (but-we-don't-want-to-prosecute-you-as-monopolies). Telecom definitely needs its share of modernizing, but it should probably be more targeted.
- ocdtrekkie 5y ago
  The fact that ISPs don't even come close to those numbers is a good example of why tech companies are a much bigger problem than ISPs. ISPs are the monster under the bed big tech has been paying people to scare you with so you don't look too closely at them.
  - wbl 5y ago
    The competition for my ISP is not a click away.
    - ocdtrekkie 5y ago
      Neither is Google's, their marketing to the contrary. Installing another app store on their phone OS (which has no competition) requires several steps involving disabling so-called security protections and then side-loading the store. Search is largely protected by the fact that every business must do business with Google if they're to have any customers at all, etc. Obviously, physical infrastructure is a bit harder to switch, but I have three major wireline ISPs here, four major wireless ones, and I believe two satellite services are an option too. Meanwhile, most Google services have no meaningful competition that isn't incredible niche.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - judge2020 5y ago
        It’s safe to say that the main revenue driver, Google Search, has easy-to-switch-to competitors like ddg or bing. Android is an indirect revenue driver since it defaults to Google search but it’s far from the majority way people get to Search.
        ocdtrekkie 5y ago
        This is untrue, if you understand who the customer is, and who the product is. As long as Google holds 70-90% of Search, businesses have no choice but to pay Google to run Google Ads. Because most products being sold are using Google, and Google sells the top search result as an ad. Businesses can't meaningfully switch their ad revenue over to Bing or DDG, and the network effects of that ensure Google can't be deposed.
      - mahogany 5y ago
        > Obviously, physical infrastructure is a bit harder to switch, but I have three major wireline ISPs here, four major wireless ones, and I believe two satellite services are an option too. Okay, but tens of millions of other Americans have only one broadband choice (if they have one at all). There is clearly a monopoly issue there.
      - indigochill 5y ago
    - elzbardico 5y ago
      For the vast majority of people on dense urban areas, it is.
- Judgmentality 5y ago
  > Since there has never been any company with $600 billion annual sales I wonder if someone clever might exploit this loophole to kill the reverse repo market, which is almost hitting $600 billion daily. And technically it's run by the fed, which is technically a private entity. This is obviously an outlier within an outlier and God knows the government wouldn't let it's magical money maker come under fire, but it seems like with the right set of circumstances this going in front of SCOTUS could completely undermine how our entire concept of debt and lending works in the US economy. Everything I'm saying is purely speculation. This actually happening is about as likely as the US admitting it invaded Iraq for oil (and a bunch of other more nuanced reasons). It's not about honesty; it's about money.
  - JumpCrisscross 5y ago
    > technically it's run by the fed The Fed executes repos and reverse repos. It does not run the market. Primary dealers execute these through tri-party repo agents, which practically is like two banks.
- vitus 5y ago
  Walmart is close to that $600B sales number (~$560B revenue in 2020), but not quite there. Their website claims 100M MAUs, though, so they'd be covered [0]. Comcast likely does meet that 50M number, depending on how you look at things. They have ~30M residential customer relationships, but that's likely only counting each household once (as opposed to per person in the household). AT&T's Q1 earnings listed 44.2M domestic subscribers, just considering WarnerMedia (HBO + HBO Max). Again, probably counting customers as opposed to household members that use the service. Verizon's Q1 earnings listed 94 million "total wireless retail connections". (While we're listing subscriber counts for video streaming -- Netflix also meets the 50M threshold, and Disney+ probably does. Netflix has 74M US+Canada subscribers, but there are only 10M households in Canada... Likewise, Disney+ "only" has 40M US subscriptions but again, subscriptions vs household members.) [0] "Our largest website, Walmart.com, sees up to 100 million unique visitors a month, according to comScore, and is growing every year." https://corporate.walmart.com/our-story/our-business https://corporate.walmart.com/our-story/our-business edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_wireless_communications_service_providers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_wireless... says AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile all have >100M US subscribers.

Hard to tell from the summaries. I hope this addresses ISPs too. Comcast, AT&T seem to operate like a cartel.

by gsmo 5y ago

Hard to tell from the summaries. I hope this addresses ISPs too. Comcast, AT&T seem to operate like a cartel.

ProjectArcturis 5y ago

It doesn't.

jeffbee 5y ago

Spoiler: they don't! The ACCESS act, for example, applies only to services with > 50 million MAU and either sales or market caps over $600 billion. Since there has never been any company with $600 billion annual sales, it applies to only 7 companies in the world, and really only 6 because I don't think Saudi Aramco really qualifies.

ethbr0 5y ago
Personal opinion? Good. The restrictions and remedies here seem fairly harsh. Of the sort you'd only want to cover monopolies (but-we-don't-want-to-prosecute-you-as-monopolies). Telecom definitely needs its share of modernizing, but it should probably be more targeted.
ocdtrekkie 5y ago
The fact that ISPs don't even come close to those numbers is a good example of why tech companies are a much bigger problem than ISPs. ISPs are the monster under the bed big tech has been paying people to scare you with so you don't look too closely at them.
- wbl 5y ago
  The competition for my ISP is not a click away.
  - ocdtrekkie 5y ago
    Neither is Google's, their marketing to the contrary. Installing another app store on their phone OS (which has no competition) requires several steps involving disabling so-called security protections and then side-loading the store. Search is largely protected by the fact that every business must do business with Google if they're to have any customers at all, etc. Obviously, physical infrastructure is a bit harder to switch, but I have three major wireline ISPs here, four major wireless ones, and I believe two satellite services are an option too. Meanwhile, most Google services have no meaningful competition that isn't incredible niche.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - judge2020 5y ago
      It’s safe to say that the main revenue driver, Google Search, has easy-to-switch-to competitors like ddg or bing. Android is an indirect revenue driver since it defaults to Google search but it’s far from the majority way people get to Search.
      - ocdtrekkie 5y ago
        This is untrue, if you understand who the customer is, and who the product is. As long as Google holds 70-90% of Search, businesses have no choice but to pay Google to run Google Ads. Because most products being sold are using Google, and Google sells the top search result as an ad. Businesses can't meaningfully switch their ad revenue over to Bing or DDG, and the network effects of that ensure Google can't be deposed.
    - mahogany 5y ago
      > Obviously, physical infrastructure is a bit harder to switch, but I have three major wireline ISPs here, four major wireless ones, and I believe two satellite services are an option too. Okay, but tens of millions of other Americans have only one broadband choice (if they have one at all). There is clearly a monopoly issue there.
    - indigochill 5y ago
  - elzbardico 5y ago
    For the vast majority of people on dense urban areas, it is.
Judgmentality 5y ago
> Since there has never been any company with $600 billion annual sales I wonder if someone clever might exploit this loophole to kill the reverse repo market, which is almost hitting $600 billion daily. And technically it's run by the fed, which is technically a private entity. This is obviously an outlier within an outlier and God knows the government wouldn't let it's magical money maker come under fire, but it seems like with the right set of circumstances this going in front of SCOTUS could completely undermine how our entire concept of debt and lending works in the US economy. Everything I'm saying is purely speculation. This actually happening is about as likely as the US admitting it invaded Iraq for oil (and a bunch of other more nuanced reasons). It's not about honesty; it's about money.
- JumpCrisscross 5y ago
  > technically it's run by the fed The Fed executes repos and reverse repos. It does not run the market. Primary dealers execute these through tri-party repo agents, which practically is like two banks.
vitus 5y ago
Walmart is close to that $600B sales number (~$560B revenue in 2020), but not quite there. Their website claims 100M MAUs, though, so they'd be covered [0]. Comcast likely does meet that 50M number, depending on how you look at things. They have ~30M residential customer relationships, but that's likely only counting each household once (as opposed to per person in the household). AT&T's Q1 earnings listed 44.2M domestic subscribers, just considering WarnerMedia (HBO + HBO Max). Again, probably counting customers as opposed to household members that use the service. Verizon's Q1 earnings listed 94 million "total wireless retail connections". (While we're listing subscriber counts for video streaming -- Netflix also meets the 50M threshold, and Disney+ probably does. Netflix has 74M US+Canada subscribers, but there are only 10M households in Canada... Likewise, Disney+ "only" has 40M US subscriptions but again, subscriptions vs household members.) [0] "Our largest website, Walmart.com, sees up to 100 million unique visitors a month, according to comScore, and is growing every year." https://corporate.walmart.com/our-story/our-business https://corporate.walmart.com/our-story/our-business edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_wireless_communications_service_providers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_wireless... says AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile all have >100M US subscribers.