> If you only have 2 or 3 companies competing ... If there were truly only 2 companies that provided internet in the Bay Area (this would be extremely surprisi

> If you only have 2 or 3 companies competing ... If there were truly only 2 companies that provided internet in the Bay Area (this would be extremely surprising to me), collusion might be possible. With 3, you now have a nice unstable equilibrium in game theory terms. But what do you want to bet there are even more, and you've only heard about the name brand ones? We haven't considered wireless broadband providers. How many of those are there? Okay, so maybe the Bay Area's okay, but what about the rest of America? Turns out that, according to the FCC's own data, 98% of zipcodes have 2 or more landline providers, and 88% of zipcodes have 4 or more. Again, this is not counting 3g or 4g. http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DOC-292191A1.pdf http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DOC-292191...