Channels being locked out in software is mainly a Samsung thing; Samsung is all-in on blocking arbitrage--you can buy phones in India for 50-60% of what a comparable model costs in Europe and they support all the bands necessary to work, but Samsung either locks out the channels or region-locks the phone to prevent enterprising traders from buying a pallet of phones and grey-marketing them. Motorola does a bit of that as well but not to the same extent.

Neither Apple nor Google allow LTE or 5G bands to be locked out--and they don't region-lock their phones either, though they both do geoblock features. Somewhat ironically it's Google who's more aggressive about that--Apple only blocks features that are actually illegal (UWB in former Soviet countries for spectrum issues, the hearing aid function of AirPods for regulatory reasons, etc) vs. Google has recently started locking out 'unsupported' features like Google Pay in India and Android Auto in HK.