I find HE useful as a special kind of transit provider. They have more peerings than anyone and they have peerings that you will not be able to get yourself. They are not necessarily a replacement for connecting directly to local internet exchanges, but rather a supplement.

Unless you can afford to have most of the top tier transit providers, you will often get a more direct path through the many peerings of HE. Then as you grow and establish your own peerings, you will move some of that traffic away from HE to your own.

One gotcha is that for some unknown reason, some of the big content networks do apparently not peer with HE. However as an eyeball network you will have little trouble getting those directly.

Regards,

Baldur