Regional transit pricing differences?

Fri Aug 6 19:16:05 UTC 2004

I'm attempting to do some research on how having a local exchange point
affects transit pricing.  Common sense and anecdotal evidence suggests
that transit should be and is cheaper when the data can be handed off
through local peering, but I don't have any hard data to back that up.
I'm hoping I can get answers to the following questions from a large
number of US ISPs in a wide variety of locations:

- What city or area are you in?
- What city do you buy your transit in?
- How far do you have to haul the data from where you buy the transit to
  where you use it?
- How much are you paying for your transit connections -- dollars per
  megabit per second and how many megabits per second?
- How much are you paying for circuits to connect you to the transit
  provider, if the circuits aren't included?
- Do you peer at an exchange point?  If so:
  - Which one?
  - How close is it to you?
  - How much are you paying for the port, and for how much traffic?
  - How much are you paying for circuits to get to the exchange?

I'm looking for actual negotiated prices, not opening offers from sales
people.

I'm only really looking for US data at this point.  I'll probably ask this
question again about other countries at some point in the future, but at
this point involving multiple countries would introduce too many other
variables.

I recognize that a lot of this information is covered under non-disclosure
agreements, and may also be seen as sensitive internal company
information.  Therefore, I don't want to know who the transit providers
are, and I don't particularly need to know who you are.  I'm planning to
aggregate the data together by region, and publish only the aggregates,
not the data from any individual networks.

I probably won't post an immediate summary to the list, but I should have
a paper on the subject written by Mid-October.

Thanks,
Steve Gibbard
Packet Clearing House