I just need band 13 for my area. Band 13 is Verizon’s main band for 4G LTE. Here is my eyeballing of Verizon’s bands and their coverage, based on https://www.cellmapper.net/ I suggest that you use that website to see which bands that you might need. This modem covers the top 2:
13: Covers most of the US.
4: More coverage than band 66.
66: Scattered, more coverage than band 5, mostly tracks population dense areas and major roads.
2: Scattered.
5: Scattered.
26: Hardly used.
Sorry, mentioned Sequans VZ22M EZLinkLTE Module (Colibri = low cost LTE-only) is from the side of the Global Certification Forum (GCF) unidentified, AFAIK. As stated, it is certified compliant with Verizon Wireless Open Network specifications.
And, it is just an self replacement (alternative) modem, to be proofed by those interested in Wi-Fi Calling within Verizon (on any platform and eventually even on Librem 5). Anyway, it is much more about Gnome effort to support Wi-Fi Calling from any carrier like it was already brought here:
From Japan.
If librem5 is compatible with Japanese carriers (I think it is), if it has no Giteki Mark (Japanese national certification mark of wave transmission machine like FCC/CE), it is illegal.
I really want to make sure it has the mark.
Please check out the following thread.
I am concerned about the whitelisting problem. Carriers do not like the Google & Apple duopoly either, so hopefully they will show some support soon. I am thinking about switching to AT&T and ordering the PLS8-US. The PLS8 has AT&T’s approval (according to the modem’s spec sheet), and PLS8-US supports all of AT&T’s primary bands. Verizon’s primary band is B13. While Verizon has other bands in populated areas, in some areas, only B13 is available. This is not included in the US variant, and the only variants that support that band do not include voice. This is kind of ironic because one had to use AT&T in order to use iPhones for a while.
From what I understand of the US mobile phone system, your networks don’t like it because they can’t do much about locking down the phones, stuffing them with bloatware and charging extra for what should be normal features. Taking that in mind, I really do not see them favouring a system over which they have even less control.
Looking at it from the outside, I cannot understand how your system is so fragmented, so incompatible and how much excessive control your mobile phone providers have.
I think it is the modem inside the librem5 that might be compatible and require such a mark. And if the user replaces the modem with a new one, it has to have a mark to be legal.
The links you posted are not reflective of the real world use.
When I brought over 3 phones to Verizon, this very process on their website was showing them as “not supported” and “ineligible”. They were all factory unlocked. But, once I activated them with supported-whitelisted IMEIs they were perfectly fine and still in use.
I saved most of them from before
I had a list of the phones precisely because I knew I’m gonna need it at one point.
That’s what I did with ATT too.
Some were carrier branded , some unlocked but supported (Pixels)
Years ago , when I was short , I would ask a friend or family member for their IMEI
And to add to my previous comment,
One if the IMEIs that belonged to Verizon branded phone (2013 Moto X) also showed as not supported, yet it worked from a get go without changing IMEI attached to the sim. So, I think it’s not about modem or whatever, but specific device list. Why? They wanna make sure that all features network provides work on your phone. For example WiFi calling is not available for this phone.
Many of them sell USB modems and hotspots. They have no control over the computer that they plug into, except maybe the drivers with USB modems. They cannot control what connects to a hotspot because the devices connect with WiFi. I would be fine with giving up the cell voice functionality and using a 3rd party VoIP service to provide me with voice service over the Internet. I can see them having an issue with this back in the 3G days, but 4G networks should have enough capacity where this should not be an issue.
The US market has more people spread out, and people hate seeing new cell towers. So that might be a reason. Also, regulatory capture. It’s like larger governments are less easy to hold accountable or something.
Clever, but unless Purism provides us with new IMEIs, or documents this process, then the IMEI checking website results will be relevant for most users.
Given your workaround, it makes sense to include in the results that just because the website rejects the built-in IMEI, that the phone might still be made to work with that carrier. However, the carrier might not like Purism if the workaround instructions came from Purism itself.
As per Todd Weaver response to my Q, Purism won’t submit the phone to US carriers for any sort of certification. Therefore, it’s extremely unlikely that we gonna see IMEIs associated with L5 whitelisted on these 2 major networks.
Though, my primary concern remains - will it be “black listed” , which won’t let it use VoLTE no matter what you try to do.
Somehow, customers who do not monitor this forum need to know the implications of this before selecting their modem. Maybe they will want to switch carriers after knowing their options, and changing carriers might mean selecting a different modem. Having a bunch of customers change modems after failing to activate the one that they chose during shipping will not be good for anyone.
Another thing being that IMEI numbers are a prime way of tracking you, so that the idea in general is to allow any phone that might be available to service to have an IMEI to track (assuming in most cases no hardware kill switch is present). This means that the presumption is that non-stollen phones will all have IMEI of functioning basis. Without this the phone is both undetectable to Uncle Sam and pretty much bricked.
