Do you seriously view it that way? See the financial analysis available on the web about Cogent and tell me the same thing again.
Same could be said for many companies in our industry at the moment, I call them the zombies.
I want my packets to make it to the destination. For some Euros more I get real transit from real networks. See, all the world is fine again. He who wants to save even more money gets what he pays for.
I remember people saying that about Level3 and many others.
I bet your viewpoint would maybe change if you had nearly exclusively DSL traffic and hardly B2B- type traffic. I could be wrong, of course.
If I was solely in that business I would not be focused on building big international networks, its pointless and unless you take significant market share from the PTTs, notably in Europe (which btw is highly unlikely given that the various legislators and regulators fail on a near constant basis to level the playing field for all operators) - the chances of making a return are incredibly slim. Better to setup smaller national networks, exchange most of the local traffic at the local peering point and pay $transit_network for the other 30 odd percent, do a decent deal with $transit_network and you'll be quids in and have a much more managable cashflow cycle without the step upgrades to some chunky network that the majority of your customers don't care about. Neil.