Hi Susan, Just a quick comment on peering generally, and the framing we give the topic, which I'm sure you'll appreciate affects how we think about any subject. A majority of the confusion around peering comes, I believe, from attributing ownership of the traffic to the operator. We don't say a package with a carrier or letter with a courier is theirs, but we do say:

the traffic of smaller/competitive ISPs

In fact the traffic is the customer's not the network's, and we ignore that perspective at the peril of confusion. Customers of ISPs pay to send and receive, therefore each ISP has contracted to perform that service and charge the customer accordingly. To then seek additional market dominance empowered rents for doing what they have already agreed to do is improper, particularly if it impedes the customer receiving the service paid for. If it was the carriers traffic, the carrier should have to pay another to carry it, but when considered from the view point that the traffic is their customer's, and has been paid for, any discrimination becomes bizarre. It would amount to the carrier degrading the service to their customer depending on source. Since Internet service is utterly about exchanging information between customers of autonomous networks, and consequently peering as per the Wikipedia definition, not doing so is misleading the consumer about the service offered.