Gee, just having attended (part of) a NANOG meeting I would have thought that talking amongst the operators about how to work out connectivity quality issues amongst operators was something that was already happening, sort of like the conversations that go on about peering. If DI, or Akamai, for example, or anybody else wants to worry about connectivity to places not directly doing business with them, one would like to think they'd talk about this in some relevant forum, rather than jabbing a sharp stick in their neighbor's eye to see if they say 'ouch'.

I don't know anything about what digital island is doing in particular, but for a long time people have struggled with the issue of how to offer better quality connectivity to sites off of their network.

The communal nature of the Internet in times gone by provided altruistic desires (usually) to provide good connectivity, but as the quality becomes directly tied to cost, it is likely to suffer.

I suspect that DI, like many other companies, is actively monitoring external sites to track, study, and hopefully improve connectivity quality to them.