Aren't we six years past the point where people ask because they have a well founded concern?
No. In today's environment, the difference between vendors who represent themselves as transit providers can be orders of magnitude, measured in terms of peering fan-out, number of connections per peer, direct high-volume customer connectivity, ASN connectivity, and, most importantly, peering bandwidth per POP. If you are a T1 customer, it won't matter. If you are a multi OC48 customer, it matters very very much. You might even be quite surprised by some of the names on the list and where they place. You can prove it to yourself, if you can get the data. Or you can just offer the load and see what happens. I prefer the former. Regards, Eric Carroll Tekton Internet Associates