Lack of Exchange Points

There are many folks making the argument that the country doesn’t have enough carrier exchange points. An exchange point is a physical location where multiple carriers meet for purposes of exchanging traffic. I don’t know if this is an accurate statistic, but I’ve heard several people claim there are fourteen or fifteen states that don’t have a major exchange point. This might be true if you use the definition of an exchange point to be a place where everybody meets. There is a big downside to internet service providers (ISPs) that are not located close to an internet exchange point (IXP). They must lease fiber transport with somebody that can carry their traffic from the local market to the nearest IXP. Lack of affordable connection to the Internet is one of the factors that stop ISPs from creating connections in remote rural areas far off the beaten path. It’s interesting that the BEAD grants want to fund the last-mile networks in such remote places but are not willing to find any significant middle-mile fiber needed to make the connection to affordable transport.