This exactly, as long as your phone has at least one frequency band of the provider, then it will at least connect to their network and allow you to access data.
In the implementation in Australia, you actually will lose data access too if you're blocked (wifi still works of course). That strikes me as kind of dumb, but I guess they don't want to give the impression that it's supported at all, since the whole thing is about emergency calling access.
In episode 2F09, when Itchy plays Scratchy's skeleton like a xylophone, he strikes that same rib twice in succession yet he produces two clearly different tones. I mean, what are we, to believe that this is some sort of a, a magic xylophone or something? Boy, I really hope somebody got fired for that blunder.
You can trace it back as least as far as Barry Goldwater and the rise of right-wing "think-tanks" in the 1960s which came as a backlash to the civil rights movement and the perceived dominance of left-wing politics in government. Which led to Nixon's "Southern Strategy", right-wing talk radio, Fox News, and the ongoing brainwashing of much of rural America in particular.
I don't think Bush ever sunk to the depths of the Hitler-like rhetoric that Trump and his cronies have been using, however. Maybe the guardrails will hold if Trump wins again (or loses again) but this is not normal.
Another issue is that zwave isn't available in all countries (or it is but uses incompatible frequencies) so it's less useful outside the big markets.