Companies pay the utilities because they'll cut off service at some point.

You gotta be a utility and have a service you can cut off.

This is a succint explanation of a phenomenon that looks a bit cut-throat. In your personal life if you stop paying stuff until it gets cutoff it's because you are having financial trouble, but maybe if your life had incentives for budget cuts and expenditure microoptimization, you'd constantly be asking yourself whether you need to pay Bill A and Bill B and having to explain to yourself that actually Bill B was for phone and that's important for family and even business.