Eircom split into Eircom Wholesale and Eircom.. The last mile copper and core network is managed by Eircom Wholesale, while end users subscribe to Eircom.

The wholesale company offers its services to any phone or broadband company, with published (starting..) price lists. This seems to work well.

In Europe, we also have the notion of Internet Exchanges like INEX, LINX and AMS-IX. These are non-profits, typically owned by their members, who provide switching fabric at the major datacenters for ISPs and other internet companies to exchange traffic - without any per-peer fees. You simply pay a membership fee typically based on the number and type of ports you want.

This allows even the smallest companies to directly peer with the major ISPs. INEX requires members establish BGP peering with something like "at least 80% of other members".. Again, this seems to work well.