This is nothing new, and not necessarily bad. Monopolies, critical infrastructure and other industries should be and are regulated for the good of the many over the profits for the few.
The phone company is an infrastructure. They have no business controlling content, especially when they want to compete with the content delivered over their government-sanctioned-monopoly infrastructure.
You can say that it's just as feasable for someone else to deploy the fiber circuits that Verizon has been installing lately, but that's not true. They already have existing right-of-way agreements and they're only deploying in their current market -- in other words, it's essentially upgrading existing customers. Also, competitive infrastructure usually isn't a good thing. It's been tried in the past
-- the early power industry involved several companies competing to deliver electricity to the same area, and it was a mess.
Critical infrastructure, such as water delivery, waste management and the cables that provide the physical interconnections for power and communication need to be regulated and controlled. The competition should be among the content providers.