I'd be interested in knowing who was really providing the layer-2 connectivity. In most places your options are the local telco and the local cable company. What were the other options here?
It is possible in some places to get IP transit from someone other than the telco or cable company but almost always that is happening using the layer-2 infrastructure from the telco. I've never heard of that happening via cable but I suppose it is possible.
I've been out of this for a while, but in Connecticut it used to be possible to lease layer-2 connectivity from the telco and then provide the IP services on top of that. This was done via DSL to the end-user with the layer-2 traffic aggregated and backhauled via ATM virtual circuits to the ISPs router in some data center. It was still difficult to compete with the local telco -- who also was selling IP transit of course via the same methodology. Mainly the problem was the economies of scale. The pricing favored high-volume which is hard for a small company competing against the market visibility of the local telco.
It is possible in some places to get IP transit from someone other than the telco or cable company but almost always that is happening using the layer-2 infrastructure from the telco. I've never heard of that happening via cable but I suppose it is possible.
I've been out of this for a while, but in Connecticut it used to be possible to lease layer-2 connectivity from the telco and then provide the IP services on top of that. This was done via DSL to the end-user with the layer-2 traffic aggregated and backhauled via ATM virtual circuits to the ISPs router in some data center. It was still difficult to compete with the local telco -- who also was selling IP transit of course via the same methodology. Mainly the problem was the economies of scale. The pricing favored high-volume which is hard for a small company competing against the market visibility of the local telco.