stackingKarma I really appreciate software that enables hardware use as the user sees fit. I mean, hell, I bought the phone, I should be able to do with it what I want, right?
Most people (admittedly not all) who buy a phone-shaped device plan to use it as a cellular phone at least some of the time. Cellular carriers enter into agreements with end users covering things like data limits, payments, voicemail boxes, and so on. Carriers also enter into agreements with governments to get spectrum licenses, and governments require things like fine-grained location tracking (to support emergency calls) and support for cellular emergency alerts.
Also, in many countries, cellular handsets must be certified before they can be sold, so governments also get to require handset manufacturers to support features. Recently there was a huge mega-thread on this forum based on concerns about a new EU directive that, among other things, requires sellers of radio transmitters (such as cellular phones) to ensure that radio firmware behaves reasonably.
Overall, long before you bought the phone, and after, various entities have contractual responsibilities about that phone, and they have them even you didn't explicitly agree to them. We might wish for some of those responsibilities to be different, but right now they're not.