Shit internet up until recently.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Internet_Exchange

40GB/s??? How does amazon expect to put an entire region in there and to share the 40GB/s with the other hosts already up there (OVH)?

"averaging 40gbps" != "maximum 40gbps"

Also, qix puts their member list online, and Amazon has a 10gbps port: http://www.qix.ca/en/members/membership

From 2013: "deployed over 180 Gbps of capacity into the exchange." https://www.cologix.com/pdf/QIX-Case-Study.pdf

If we believe the Cacti graphs, over the past several weeks the Montréal QIX peaked at 50Gbps[1]. Your comment implies that the QIX might be running over a mere 40Gbps link, but presumably their aggregate link capacity is (much?) higher than that.

[1] http://www.qix.ca/en/qix/network

That's 40gbps of voluntary (technically settlement free, but not in the usual meaning of the term) peering, not paid transit. Paid transit numbers are several orders of magnitude higher, and total traffic numbers are unknown.

Amazon connections between regions are owned by Amazon. Only last mile traffic would need to go to an Exchange.

Yes that has been a problem... Let me tell you, everybody would have been investing in the infrastructure if there had been a social desire to actually attract datacenters...

Nobody will invest in good internet lines if the only thing to go around is middle-aged people who think the internet is useless...

They put business people in charge of the Electrical company instead of engineers...

Service quality went down, new projects were put on hold, and investments in new technology was basically killed... Prices went up too.

Quebec has nationalized electricity and really missed the boat for newer technology.

until very recently the competition for serious backbone IP carriers in major canadian cities (vancouver, calgary, montreal, toronto) was terrible and much higher priced compared to buying IP transit in a place like seattle, chicago, north virginia, NYC, los angeles, etc.