Lets put some math on the network costs. An oft quoted cost is $1/mb at p95 for decent transit. 1 mbs * 2,592,000 seconds = 2,592,000 mb per month, / (8 * 1024 gigabytes) = 316GB transferred per month. Dividing our $1 / 316GB = $0.0031 per GB transferred _at a constant 1mbs_.

However most networks have sine wave pattern diurnal utilization. A common peak to average ration would be 3:1. Our $0.0031 is effectively the rate for an average of 1mbs. To get that average rate we'll be paying about 3x, or $0.0093 per GB transferred. So we're paying $0.01 per GB for the transit alone. This is also in a major metro area in North America. Transit costs can easily be 3-10x in EU or 10-20x in AP.

On top of that there's capex and opex for that 10gb port. Assuming you've got some decent scale you're going to get 96 10gb ports in a $300,000 to $500,000 router, or $3-5,000 per 10gb port. You need ports both north and south, so you get 480gbs throughput per chassis. But you can't run above 80% util, so call it 384gbs of peak throughput. Opex for rack position, data techs, power, etc will cost $2,000 to $5,000 per month. Amortized over 36 months let's call it $10,000 to $17,000 per month all up.

That 384gbs peak throughput is actually more like 128gbs averaged over the month. At 128gb/s average we transfer about 41,472,000 GB per month, or $0.00024 to $0.00041 per GB. Now double that cost 'cause routers actually come in pairs for fault tolerance. So we're paying $0.0005 to $0.0008 per GB of transit connectivity.

And how many hops are there back to your application? I'd hazard around 6 by the time you go transit -> edge -> border -> core -> dc -> agg -> tor. Paying for that internal network infrastructure is going to add $0.0030 to $0.0050 to our bill. All up that gets us to $0.0128 to $0.0151 per GB transferred from our host to a third party network.

Expanding the error bars lets round to $0.01 to $0.02 of network costs per GB that we deliver. To get these prices you're going to have a capital budget of tens of millions per year. OpEx would be at least $500K, or more likely a million plus, per month. If you can actually beat my pricing I'm hiring and or would like to subscribe to your news letter.

Apologies if I missed something in the math. I had to do some mental acrobatics to go from dollars per gb/s to dollars per GB/month.