Are you suggesting that Verizon should have given you that feature for "free"? In that case, they would have either passed that cost on to every customer, or not had that feature at all, taking it away from those who were willing to pay for it.
I think the parent was implying that large telco interests have a dubious track record when it comes to the balance between investing in capacity vs. rent-seeking.
You couldn't connect a phone to Verizon's network unless Verizon sold it to you.
The phones they sold had the firmware configured to prohibit adding content from any source other than their store, which sold it at an extremely high cost.