Actually, I think too many assumptions were made.
Let's simplify.
We know UUNet traffic capabilities were reduced significantly. Uunet has many big customers. Other big carriers had similar affects on their networks, probably particularly at peering points.
We know many companies use public or private VPN services from major carriers such as these, and that both VPN types may use public internet carriers.
I think therefore that the only true conclusion we could say is that if BoA's traffic was not prioritized, it therefore suffered collateral damage primarily due to traffic not being able to get through between ATM's and the central processing center.
Being someonewhat familiar with the design of ATM networks, I can tell you that it is not correct. Your basic ATM gets two to three connections - one being a data access line, the other being a regular alarm line. The data access line is POTS, DS0 or, ISDN. The alarm line is POTS (the funny part is that certain large banks when buying other banks forget what the other line is used for and put a disconnect order on those creating lots of mess). The transaction data is never supposed to travel on any non-dedicated network. Alex