Also, you probably don’t have the right to make your own mobile modem unless you’re fine with it needing its own car battery and alternator thanks to Qualcomm’s patents.
Standards patents must be made available to license. Apple tried really hard to invest in a competing cellular modem provider (Intel) and gave up. Turns out, they’re really hard to build, and that’s why you can’t build one. Not patents.
Apple did purchase Intel's modem division[0], so while they temporarily have started purchasing from Qualcomm, maybe they're throwing more R&D at it than Intel did to actually compete with Qualcomm within the next few years.