For decades there has been endless policy wrangling over whether “unlocking your phone” (removing restrictions allowing you to take the device with you to another carrier) should be allowed. Giant carriers have generally supported onerous phone locks because it hampers competition by making it harder to switch providers. Consumer rights groups and the public broadly support unlocked devices.
Phones are also small computers, and while its wireless chipset may only be compatible with certain carriers, that doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t be allowed to install whatever I want on it.
The antenna isn’t chipset agnostic? TIL. I normally work with radio transmitters for LoRa and Bluetooth where the antenna is just a wire connected to a radio chipset module so I assumed 4g/5g were the same