purchase connectivity from them, even if their network didn't suck.

What makes you think this? Perhaps you can share your experiences that would substantiate this claim. I have rarely seen cross country RTTs exceed 70 msec (right now it's 58msec from nyc to sfo) and don't recall the last outage they've sustained on an edge router, let alone core disruption. I also hear people discuss their lack of peering, however recent Skitter plots show them sitting pretty close to the origin. Regards, chris