On Mon, 12 Feb 1996, Paul Ferguson wrote:
Creating a consortium [akin to the NAP model] of small ISP's could easily resolve this problem, if all address space allocated to each ISP was contiguous and could be aggregated to a larger prefix.
This has been suggested on numerous occasions.
It's not only been suggested, but I believe it's been somewhat implemented. :) Back in September '94, Chris Alan (Electriciti) and a few others came up with an idea called PCH -- Packet Clearing House. The primary concept was, as you suggested, connect a bunch of small ISPs together using shared resources and address space and peer with the "big boyz." Unfortunately I haven't been involved with it lately, so hopefully someone that has can share if it was successful or not. -jh-