I think the argument is undermined by the fact that peering in Europe is in a fairly dismal state. Were there a MAE-{London, Paris, Prague} I somehow think that the big five at least might throw a T3 or two over.
"MAE London" is called the LINX and the T3s have been thrown over.
We peer with 30 other networks at the LINX in London, including GSL (Sprintlink), Pipex (uu.net), and EUnet GB (AKA PSI). If you watch the There is interesting question - does SprintLink use this peering for the traffic _from USA_ to _you_, or for it's UK customers only?
We have one example - there is Relcom there, and we are presented on our M9-IX exchange point. New provider (small-small there, XXX Global Networks, the Russian branch) asks us to make peering with them. We asked - if this allow us to get traffic _from_ and _to_ XXX Global via this link - _no, this will be peering with russian branch only_ was the answer. Guess what have we answered? /it's not important what really XXX was/
Someone more cynical than I might even say that the US company has used the UK company's money to buy the UK company.
-- Jim Dixon VBCnet GB Ltd +44 117 929 1316 fax +44 117 927 2015 http://www.uk.vbc.net VBCnet West +1 408 971 2682 fax +1 408 971 2684
--- Aleksei Roudnev, Network Operations Center, Relcom, Moscow (+7 095) 194-19-95 (Network Operations Center Hot Line),(+7 095) 239-10-10, N 13729 (pager) (+7 095) 196-72-12 (Support), (+7 095) 194-33-28 (Fax)