After using Deutsche Telekom as an example of how great direct peering is, a few paragraphs later the article uses Deutsche Telekom as an example of the dangers of using peering provider intermediaries.
Your first example I was referring to - which you've now edited out of the article[0] to be more generic - stated:
> When Deutsche Telekom customers want to watch YouTube, that traffic flows directly from Google's network to Deutsche Telekom's network at a Frankfurt exchange point—maybe four or five router hops, minimal latency, no intermediaries. It's elegant. It's efficient. And it's exactly what Vodafone is abandoning.
Later:
> Deutsche Telekom pioneered this model in Germany, and the results have been catastrophic for customers. Not "slightly annoying" or "a bit slower"—genuinely, documentably terrible.
Edit: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45850683