Is that true? I recently listened to a story about one of the Nordic countries, it may have been Denmark?, and how employers can easily fire employees. They argued that this, along with really good unemployment benefits, actually helps the economy by making the work force more fluid.
It's plausible some specific carriers have locked specific models but it's also plausible some people posting in that thread were using Android 1.5 back in 2009 - note how the thread was opened in April and closed in October 2009 as "Status: Released"
But even before then there was a trick to using HTTP POST for browser uploads in Android. iPhone could never do that.