Handset makers and carriers all have strong financial incentives to harden the basebands against hacks because they don't want people unlocking their phones, which was often being done by exploiting bugs in basebands. Also, they need the airwaves to have integrity and mobile protocols are all based on the assumption of trusted endpoints that don't violate the rules. Now that DIY GSM base stations have become a reality, carriers face a nightmare scenario of someone running a buggy or malicoius "tower" that infects basebands of any phones that enters into range and starts them doing some kind of horrible attack against the carrier infrastructure. E.g. you can imagine an extortion attempt that works this way. It's in their best interests for their devices to behave predictably and be controlled only be themselves.