They aren't phoning home, or at least that is not the issue here. The goggles don't even ship with any kind of wireless capability to phone home, although there is an aftermarket wifi module for video streaming and such.

The issue here is that the bootloader (apparently written by a contractor) was preprogrammed to prevent booting after a certain date. The contractor is claiming this is the result of some kind of license agreement (or maybe disagreement?) with Orqa, the manufacturer.