We were in a similar situation, smaller rural (although in our case private) provider making the choice between continuing to buy transit from our neighbor (big ISP) whom we compete with in certain towns, or getting ~300 miles of backhaul to NYC and buying transit there. We came off significantly ahead (10g protected wave + 10g IP transit for about the same as 2g from the large ISP) going with backhaul.
It all comes down to who you have going through the area that can give you backhaul. If the incumbent ISP is the only game in the area, then they would be your backhaul provider, as buildout to a rural area would be prohibitively expensive -- *Ben Hatton* Network Engineer Haefele TV Inc. bhat...@htva.net www.htva.net
