> I've only seen that Cogent has a presence here, but the internet doesn't have good things to say about them

They’re good enough and they’re dirt cheap. Pricing really matters since you pass savings on to your customers. Vermont Telecom, as an example of a reasonably sized regional ISP with thousands of customers, uses Cogent as their primary upstream.

I wouldn’t fall into the trap of trying to build something out using hardware or upstream providers that people on Internet forums that don’t have a financial stake in making an ISP work financially and operationally approve of.

I think Cogent has earned their vibes, but if they're all you can get near you, they're ok enough to get started with.

As you get bigger, you can put a router somewhere (or two somewheres) with cogent and more options and transport through cogent to get back to your service area.

Cogent is fine for most purposes. They have some odd choices upstream at times but for a smaller project, it shouldn’t be a problem. Later on you could look at a dedicated wave or ring (or tunnel, lots of options!) to another facility that has more diversity and peer through that, but make it work first!

Cogent can sell you transport to an IX where you'll get lots of traffic for free.

You don't have to buy IP transit from who sells you physical connectivity.

I've heard they have good connectivity with Comcast.

Consider one of their customers, FDC.