Hub,
Frankly I think you are making this a lot more complicated than it needs to be... My take.
Once upon a time Netflix used to pay CDN's to warehouse data and those CDN's would pay Verizon to transport it.
Netflix built there own CDN and offered it for free, Verizon noticed they used to get paid and said no thank you.
Verizon said instead use these specific transport companies because we have a comfy relationship with them or we'll underserve your data (through saturation and allowed by TOS) and Netflix said no thank you.
Now Verizon denies they're underserving and Netflix tries to pretend giving the CDN away for free is unusually generous.
I say "customers are being underserved. You two made a deal. Fix it."