Seperate the big companies into two groups. Those that provide content & those that don't. The companies who provide content are more appealing to the end user

Seperate the big companies into two groups. Those that provide content & those that don't. The companies who provide content are more appealing to the end user and so Tier 1 IP providers will be interested in allowing them to host CDN platforms on the edge and connect into their networks so even if they do pay, it will be a very competitive rate. Then peering agreements will reduce the requirement for purchasing IP even more. Companies who don't provide content but are huge, will have a department specifically for negotiating competitive rates & will again take advantage of peering in a big way. Dark fibre is a different product to IP transit but again, negotiation teams will work to get huge discount.