[dylz]

> Does enough independent isp demand exist to aggregate the traffic to provide breakouts and satisfy Spectrum's 8 point term?

You're very close to describing standard IP transit. The regional-ness of small ISPs and indies make it such that interconnections throughout the entire US make it infeasible, especially considering the cost of such numerous transport and XCs.

I can get a blend from the DC - they aggregate enough capacity to peer with Telus for example, so the ASPath would go me -> DC -> Telus over IX or me -> DC -> Transit -> Telus.

If I got on the exchange directly, Telus peers selectively and does not do routeservers, so my traffic to them would not go over the exchange anyway, so what is the point?

Another annoyance is that in many facilities cross connects cost more than bandwidth itself - I get spam from Cogent daily offering cheap bandwidth, but the XC monthly cost costs more than several gigabit of Cogent bandwidth, so why bother unless I need a 100G port at once?