Never said free, but easy and cheap. It was much cheaper a couple of years ago, when I got ACINQ to open two channels to me for 110 sats. But it's still cheap, IMO, compared to other options. And, the main thing, it's very easy.

No complications for somebody who wants inbound liquidity without having to worry about creating or managing channels. Useful, for example, to help somebody else (the Phoenix user) to get some inbound liquidity (they pay the ACINQ fee) while getting some yourself in your wallet or node even cheaper (just for the on chain fee for opening a channel) or almost free (should you already have a channel opened).

The more I think about it, the more I like it.