That's very much a product of the American oligarchy - with Apple, MSFT and Google at the forefront. Yes, these particular restrictions were the gifts from the US Telco industry. But the corporations in the US behave practically all the same - abuse the customers as much as possible, in every conceivable manner. This is partly due to the fact that these incumbents don't allow smaller ethical competitors to survive.
Granted that there are variations of these abusers in every country. But the US companies are on a whole different level. They practically own the ostensibly democratic government. I'm sorry to break the top commenter's bubble of bliss. But these companies have depleted any goodwill and benefits of doubt a long time ago to deserve any kind mention.
PS: I get downvoted every time I express this sentiment here. That's not surprising, given the strong representation that these rogue players have on HN. Fair enough! But the downvoters would do well to realize that no amount of such anonymous disapprovals are going to reverse the course of the global tech community's steadily souring opinions and hostility towards such companies. It won't take very long for this to hit their markets too, if the boycott hasn't already started in several parts of the world. So they might as well take the message and take the steps to repair their damaged reputation and trust, though it's going to be a long road ahead to recovery.
It was exactly like the GP described in the UK too. All-powerful carriers at a time when Apple was almost bankrupt, before Google was a verb and before Microsoft made phones that would crash just sitting waiting for a call.
That's very much a product of the American oligarchy
And yet it happens in dozens of other countries that are not America.
You may be surprised to learn that the whole world is not Europe. The colonial era is dead.
with Apple, MSFT and Google at the forefront
None of those companies had phones in the era we're discussing.