This is slightly different since the company you rent the server from is paying an ISP for internet traffic. If you don't use that bandwidth, the server company

This is slightly different since the company you rent the server from is paying an ISP for internet traffic. If you don't use that bandwidth, the server company isn't charged and they pass the savings to you. With this issue, you're still using the network bandwidth you paid for, it's still going on the internet, but its end point is a server owned by the ISP. You are not accessing a special subnet IP - you're using internet DNS and internet infrustructure to pass this "free" data. I would even bet that if there was damage to the network and there was no direct route to the server, your packets may end up routing outside of the ISPs inrastructure.