> If you're sending a packet to London, rather than next door; it touches more routers, and takes up more fiber capacity, (...)

There's the bug in your logic: A packet to London may touch less routers than one next door due various reasons that disallow routers near you to handle the traffic (maybe the "direct line" between you and your neighbor is damaged. Then it has to go to London and back - and this is only the most simple example). In general, you cannot say which routers are touched by a packet before you've send it.

> There's the bug in your logic: A packet to London may touch less routers

Regardless of the number of routes, the ISP knows before relaying your packet that certain destinations require the use of paid traffic while other can be accessed with peered traffic. I agree with the grand-parent: it seems strange that ISP are not charging more for access to IPs that are outside their peering agreements. I am not suggesting it; I just find it strange that they are not trying to push it on us like the mobile operators are trying to do giving you free access to Facebook [1] and their own music stores while charging for access to other sites.

[1] 0.facebook.com

> it touches more routers, and takes up more fiber capacity, so it costs more, but the customer isn't charged more.

From a consumer protection standpoint, how would you communicate this to the end user?

When you're dialing a phone number, you can look at it and know if it's local, long-distance or international, and you can make the informed decision to make the call or not given your phone company's price list.

But when you're on the internet, how would that work? A popup before each TCP connection is established? What about "local" webpages that use "international" resources, like embedding jQuery from Google?

No, the business model is already taken care of, the various providers are organized in tiers with peering agreements, and everyone pays to their upstream link.

There are already countries where international traffic costs more than domestic traffic. Ever rent a server in South Korea? International traffic is often limited to 1-3% of your monthly quota, depending on who your backbone provider is. Overage fees on international traffic usually run an order of magnitude higher than usual.

A policy like that has more than merely economic impact. It discourages people from interacting freely with foreign web services, contributing to a relatively isolated online culture. Korea might be doing this for economic and technical reasons only, but you can be sure that China has cultural and political agendas.

Bringing the same policy to consumers, on the other hand, would be insane. Even in Korea, consumers only pay a flat rate and the ISP absorbs any cost difference.

Just speaking from Mexico... Telmex soon announcing - "Banda Ancha Internacional". Mr Slim already charges insane fees for any form of communication through his company, having an opportunity like this, he'd seize it immediately.

While technologically there is a valid case we all know that in reality the system will be abused once implemented, named by oppressive regimes like Iran and China. It's no surprise that China and Russia are pushing schemes like this. Both Iran and China have already stated they want 'their' own version of the internet and China is already succeeding. Theoretically any country could claim to have an 'open' internet but in practice charge insane fees for international traffic, effectively censoring their citizens. Let's hope that doesn't happen.