In an effort to determine the feasibility of running a large scale web server(s) locally I called around to the various internet providers to find out what they would charge for a 20 Mbps symmetric connection to our office in the Bozeman Hotel building.  All of the quotes were surprisingly close and here they are in case anyone else is curious (keep in mind the cost for connections like these are highly location dependent).

Bresnan - $2,000 per month plus $2,500 setup fee.  The rep I spoke with said prices normally run between $85 and $115 per megabit per month depending on location and how much you are buying.  He also said they can go up to 1 gigabit connections if needed.

Qwest - $2,750 per month.  The Qwest rep said they offer a DS3 connection (45 megabits) for about the same price.

Bridgeband - A rough guess of between $2,000 and $3,000 per month.

LightNex - $1700 per month.  LightNex also offers average 10 Mbps burstable to 20 connection for around $1100 per month and average 5 burstable to 20 connection for $765 per month.

Little Apple Tech - I met with one of the Little Apple employees at the home show.  He told me that they could provide the bandwidth but that they would probably charge as much (or more) than the other providers because they would have to roll out new hardware.

This little exercise confirmed what I had been suspecting: hosting locally doesn't make financial sense.  Even the "premium" hosting services like Rackspace and DreamHost have their highest end dedicated servers for half what we would pay for bandwidth only.  However, all of the reps I talked to were really awesome, especially Tom from LightNex who came up to visit us despite knowing full well we were just tire kicking.  I certainly hope that one day the market shifts so we can work with at least one of these companies in the future.