If your full cost of peering with UUNET (including things such as depreciation) comes to $400 per mbit/sec and via a promisig local ISP you can get transit to UUNET at $200 per mbit/sec, your costs will decrease. Just because the IP is free with peering does not mean that it costs $0 to peer.
Nor does it cost $0 on top of that $200 to buy transit.
Really? I did not know that the quotes that I get do not say that they give me a free router and $0 install cost.
This may hold true to some degree for a small-ish network, but probably not for a larger one. Even factoring in depreciation, line cards, etc, I would imagine you won't find OC3 transit in 4 cities from any ISP to be as cheap as OC3 peering in 4 cities, for example. Add to that the chance that, as a larger network, you'll probably be getting your pipes at volume discounts.
I can from the top of my head, without breaking NDA name at least 1 promising local ISP.
I never meant to imply that peering is 0-cost. I just don't agree with the blanket statement that peering (or lack thereof) has no financial impact.
Peering networks, at this time, have very significant downside effect to fiancials that I can see, unless you are talking about UUNET, Sprint, AT&T, Level3, Q and C&W. Alex