This is a serious misunderstanding of the economics of Internet.
The "equity in traffic" is not important at all.
What is important is equal share in carrying packet flows, which can be approximately measured in miles*bps. *That* costs money.
Therefore, a small ISP dumping most of its traffic to others at one exchange point will cause long-haul backbones to carry its traffic most of the distance (no matter which direction the traffic goes), thus effectively subsidizing that small ISP.
Like I said, people build public libraries in the darndest places. How would you catagorize an provider that serves customers in 38 states and two canadian provinces. It works out to be about 11% of the public library patron population in the USA. Most of the customers are located in fairly remote areas as far as telecommunications infrastructure. Which means the price of a T1 local loop can cost as much as some providers, who concentrate on more high-volume business customers, pay for a DS3 between larger population centers. Cream skimming comes in all shapes and forms. Figuring out who is 'free-loading' isn't alway clear-cut. Especially when the provider that has the web farm in Virginia, and the provider with the users is hauling the traffic to 38 states and 2 canadian provinces on their backbone. -- Sean Donelan, Data Research Associates, Inc, St. Louis, MO Affiliation given for identification not representation