The same happens here in South America (Score 5, Interesting)

I work as network admin, i'm the technical POC in ARIN for our netblocks and i can tell you that the same happens here in South America (Uruguay) with our big-carrier providers (CW and UUNet nowadays)

Even worse is the fact that since Worldcom bought Embratel (the big Brazilian carrier) two years ago, they've cancelled all regional IP links we used to have. Now they want to force us into buying BW only to the US.

So, people living on the Uruguay-Brazil border have to go to USA to ping their accross-the-street neighbors. Quite an optimal network design in my humble opinion :-)