As I see it, they are really only trying to maintain their revenue stream because I am sure that they see a trend of people dropping their crap service in favor of other means of delivery of content. I would not be surprised if they try charging more for this service than they do for traditional subscription TV services.
Even so, after having dropped Dish Network and gone to a streaming / OTA solution where I pay less than 1/5 what I was paying for what amounts to essentially the same content, I would NEVER consider this.
If even behemoth Intel dropped the idea, there has to be a reason. My bet is that there is a good chance that if Verizon does this, their attempt will fail.