In the referenced message, Roy said:
Registering is not "bad", its just not beneficial. Given that the routes I want to announce are within my assigned range, why is it a good thing to register them? If the transit provider always add entries when I ask for them, it seems to be very little benefit..
This is the case of transit so I am a customer paying money for a service. I started this subthread because I felt others would want to know about this. I made the mistake of buying transit service without asking about their BGP policies. I was hoping to help by sharing my experience.
Registered routes, imho are beneficial. It permits filtering based on IRR data, and ensures that the entity announcing the routes has spent at least a modicum of time considering the impact they will have on the network. (Oh, look, I'm registering 500 routes to deaggregate this 1, maybe I'm being rude!) Of course, they still may not care how it impacts the rest of the world. Some providers loosen their filters for registered routes, since the originating entity has taken the time to say "we will announce blah". Otherwise, any leaking of more-specifics with the same origin only appears like a route leak that should be protected against. If I were choosing a transit provider, I would look for ones that attempted to do the right thing, as I enjoy stability even at the cost of a few minutes of extra work.