* R. A. Hettinga:
"Tromboning". That's a word I've been looking for.
Tromboning is what happens when I send packets between the Cable & Wireless DSL line and the Caribbean Cable cablemodem on the other side of the living room in Seafeathers Bay -- via New York (and Washington), and/or Miami (and Washington), and/or Atlanta (and Washington), not to mention Washington.
I don't think this hasn't got to do much with Antigua. It's also not specific to North America. It's very difficult to create market conditions which result in low-latency routing, so only smaller countries with a sufficently developed Internet economy have it. (The U.S. issues in this area are so bad that even a network with extensive peering hasn't got drastically better connectivity to major U.S. sites than a consumer DSL line in some European countries.)