In Ashburn, VA, I can buy Dark Fiber for $750 MRC to any datacenter in the same city. I can buy Dark Fiber for $3-5K MRC to any random building in the same city.

That Duplex Dark Fiber with DWDM can run 4TBPS of capacity at 100GE (40x 100GE). Each 100GE transceiver costs $2-4K NRC dependent on manufacturer - $160K NRC for 40x. (There are higher densities as well, like 200/400/800GE, 100GE is just getting cheap.)

In AWS, utilizing 1x100GE will cost you >$1MM MRC. For significantly less than that, let's say absolutely worst-case 5K MRC + 200K NRC, you can get 40x100GE.

Now you have extra money for 4x redundancy, fancy routers, over-spec'd servers, world-class talent, and maybe a yacht if your heart desires.