Obviously the biggest contribution to latency is distance. But there's also some close-ish regions with poor latency because there's not fiber running directly between them (for example, over the poles)

Are there an examples of regions which dramatically violate the triangle equality? (That is, where the A--C latency is much worse than the best A--B + B--C latencies)?

Just as a curiosity, could you use that idea to "infer" which data-centers are most likely directly connected by fiber, and show only the likely fiber connections?