The point is that the net isn't neutral, hasn't been for a long time. smaller (i.e. country wide) will have to buy transit from the global players (i.e. AT&T, SPRINT, LEVEL3, NTT, etc.) and their prices differ ... meansing it will cost an ISP more to deliver on say a LEVEL3 network than on an NTT network in ASIA but possibly the inverse in Europe.

The public is used to a "one price fits all" approach but at the same time not market has seen the price errosion the Network market has seen ... which means the sales models are fixed margin based ==> different prices to reach different networks ...

Corry, I hear what you are saying "paying three times" ... the general trick backbone providers play is that since they themselves are charged for capacity (on layer 0 - the cable) in terms of the highest of either outgoing or incoming ... it means that if they have 10G outgoing the incoming traffic is "free". However, since the users of outgoing (web-sites) are totally different from incoming traffic (ISP) they average the costs out and assing relative value to each ... clearly a web-site is willing to pay more/GB than a end-user.

It leads to an interesting situation where a cost to the back-bone provider from London to Milan can be different from the cost from Milan to London in the same carrier (in Europe this is not the case, in the more cut throat market in the US this is already the case)

In effect net-(non)-neutrality is already in play for the backbone providers themselves (very few BB network own their own fiber, most rent it in long term lease)

cheers.