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Wait, why though? What are they winning by not peering locally? I would've thought it would increase costs.

They probably are peering locally, just not publicly.

In Germany the largest ISP Deutsche Telekom is not peering publicly in any meaningful manner. To get access to their customers you need to pay them a lot of money and connect to their network at some remote locations. It's the reason why YouTube was laggy for years for the majority of German customers until Google finally caved.

They do peer locally, but of course they charge for it. It's all PNI, and quite expensive. For the longest time, Cloudflare routes from Toronto went down to Chicago.

Any ISP that wants to peer with Bell either pays them to connect directly, or pays Bell for transport links to IXes in the United States. It's a win-win if you're Bell!

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