[kuschku]

A major issue is that in most markets outside of Europe, peering is less common, and transit prices are significantly higher.

Europe is probably the most competitive and best market in this case, almost all other markets are dominated by monopolies. Yes, even significantly worse than the Telekom monopoly.

Look at transit in Singapore, Japan or Australia. Or even in Brasil. You’ll go bankrupt even from trying to deliver a single movie to customers.

[iptrans]

Actually Singapore and Australia aren't that terrible anymore.

Hurricane Electric has POPs in both Singapore and Australia. Transport between Singapore and Australia is $1.50 or less. Peering ports are $0.20 per Mbps.

If all you want to do is push movies at customers, there are plenty of dedicated server providers who will sell you bandwidth on the cheap in both countries.

Obviously YMMV if you want better routes or direct interconnects with local monopolies.

[kuschku]

Well that's exactly the issue, HE often doesn't have peering with local monopolies, or at best only a 10G link, because those monopolies don't even care.