Today, I was approached by *unnamed-ethernet-extension-company*. They extend ethernets between several US and UK peering exchanges. While speaking with them today, thier engineer and I got into a little bit of a disagreement as to why people peer with each other at public exchange points. My belief is that generally speaking, networks meet at public exchange points (such as MAE-*, LINX, AMSIX, AADS, etc) is to exchange traffic with each other more economically (read: save money). His belief is that people will pay a premium to get to an exchange point, because it's worth paying a premium to have 'less hops' between two networks. Essentially, he said that paying more for peering that for transit is typical, and to be expected, and most people accept this. Whats the common opinion on this?