said by guppy_fish:Verizon, being tier one and basically IS a primary backbone of the internet in the US could care less where it comes from as they never pay for peering. Netflix on the other hand has to pay to push out there subscription content.
When a network is SFP (settlement-free peering) that does NOT mean the traffic is free. Ports at 10/40/100 GigE are not free. And they do not peer with EVERY other provider at EVERY exchange point. That would be prohibitively expensive, so they have to backhaul a lot of that traffic-- some of it locally or a few dozen miles, some of it hundreds of miles or more.
Even for Tier 1's, it's a lot more efficient to source the traffic on-net and distribute it locally, than to pull across transit/SFP and then backhaul it.
The longer the distance, the more infrastructure each byte touches. As those flows increase, so must the infrastructure to support them.
The mistake you're making is focusing on "they are a tier 1 so they don't have to pay for bandwidth". UNTRUE. Traffic costs them money. A LOT of money. As a tier 1, they simply don't have to pay SOMEONE ELSE to carry it beyond their own ASN.