that can lay undersea cables yet? A cable from Northern Europe to Japan and the US North West under the North Pole icecap would be great.
Don't know about the icecaps -- the Middle East will probably have more demand than the North Pole for a long long time -- but I think FLAG has some bandwidth they'd like to sell you (http://www.flagtelecom.com/cable_route.htm). As might the telcos who own SeaMeWe-3 (http://smw3.fcr.fr/SMW/SMWB2.htm)... So:
This report also says that the relevance of US for Internet is decreasing.
Hm, I'm still waiting to witness a traceroute from Europe to Asia or the Pacific that doesn't go over the US for the first time.
Yes, but at least you can see traces from S Korea to Japan, say, which don't route through Palo Alto. Region-to-region is harder. cheers Bram