[_delirium]

That makes a bit more sense. At the level of infrastructure there already is a "European network", with pretty good interconnects. It's very uncommon for intra-European packets to go via the US, at least in continental Europe. There are some routes where it can happen due to peculiarities of peering agreements, but I've seen it quite rarely. On the other hand, if lots of Europeans are hosting their email in the U.S., then Europe having its own network doesn't do much good: ssh sessions from Milan to Copenhagen go via Austria and Germany, but emails from Milan to Copenhagen take a North-American detour.

[bbosh]

On the other hand, any traffic that needs to cross the Atlantic, via the Apollo cables, takes a detour via GCHQ Bude, which is funded by the NSA (http://www.thisiscornwall.co.uk/USA-spent-millions-Bude-spy-...). I suspect a lot of non-US traffic goes via London, too.

[fidotron]

Used to be a much greater proportion than it is today, largely thanks to the growth of places like the Amsterdam Internet Exchange.

At one point there was a building on the Isle of Dogs (former island in the Thames) through which an absolutely terrifying proportion of the network traffic for western Europe travelled.

[_delirium]

At least as far as visible hops in a traceroute go (admittedly doesn't cover everything, such as fiber-level switching), most of my traffic to the U.S. from Copenhagen currently seems to bypass the UK. A few common transatlantic endpoint pairs seem to be Paris-Ashburn (he.net), Amsterdam-DC (hwng.net), and Copenhagen-NYC (tdc.net).