While that is certainly true, that is not what I meant. For one, it's very cheap to reach such exchanges for companies like Hetzner, because they usually operate their data centers on the same campus, to safe exactly on that backhaul cost to the exchange. By implication all the ISPs are expected to extend their network into these facilities to pick up traffic. While it's true that some ISPs operate big POPs near exchanges, it's not where their customers are. And both users and data center operators rightfully expect a professionally built network with redundancy etc. In that respect it's not necessarily unfair that they charge for the traffic. (While it is certainly unfair that they don't upgrade their connections to extort outrageous prices from other market participants and what's much worse to contain internet growth on a large scale, which is why Germany is a fairly under-developed country in terms of internet connectivity).
But also, people who work for exchange point operators are the only ones left flying business class in the telecom industry. At the same time public exchanges are a single point of failure in the network that one should(!) design around anyway. There are much cleaner solutions you can design into a network at a fraction of that cost.
For our reference, you may want to check that list, it is really outdated/onesided [1], and not reflecting the reality. Better refer to ookla/netindex or other similar services [2]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Internet_...
But also, people who work for exchange point operators are the only ones left flying business class in the telecom industry. At the same time public exchanges are a single point of failure in the network that one should(!) design around anyway. There are much cleaner solutions you can design into a network at a fraction of that cost.