This changes "we'll only peer with you if you have a network topology similar to ours" into "we'll be happy to peer with you but be aware that we only send local routes when we peer at public exchanges, and if you want a full routing exchange it'll take 6 T3's worth of private peering -- can you afford it?" I think the network will work better and scale better when this kind of "peering" becomes the norm. If wide area telecom costs are the reason big guys don't like to peer with little guys, then by gum let's see peering and charging all take place exactly where the economics require it.
This model has many attractions esp if you are an international ISP, so you can reasonably openly give peering for national routes, but not for international routes as here the cost difference of doing both sides of the backhaul is even more extreme. Unfortunately, if you are sticking in a POP which is 2 75xx's and 2 Gigaswitches, AFAIK if you want to achieve the same level of redundancy you'll have to add another 2 75xxs for the privelege. I've often thought its a pity you can't divide a 75xx into 2 "virtual" routers splitting logical if/s between them and running in 2 AS's to achieve this. [you can't just use 1 router as the next hop for a local peer would have to depend on the "country of origin" of the packet]... Alex Bligh Xara Networks