> You pay to peer your traffic. That's not the whole truth. At least here in Germany, there are publicly-ish peering points. You pay a small amount for coloca

> You pay to peer your traffic. That's not the whole truth. At least here in Germany, there are publicly-ish peering points. You pay a small amount for colocating a single router in the data center, and each peering partner only accepts IP traffic for the IPs they feel responsible for (typically their own AS). Companies such as Google participate in those, so you can offload all of your Google and Youtube traffic at such a peering point. A small ISP can afford to participate in such a peering point, you only pay a fixed, monthly fee for colocation. However, you likely want to also have a carrier to whom you can hand off all the other traffic that you don't have direct peers for. (Source: I work for a company that hosts some of the POPs for https://www.peeringdb.com/ix/135 https://www.peeringdb.com/ix/135)