That’s too bad about Republic.
I did a live chat with Twigby the other day. They don’t do Wi-Fi calling, but considering the bands covered by the BM818-A1, they were optimistic that they would be able to provide service for the L5 – especially after the Sprint/T-Mobile merger completes.
They said that they would need to check the IMEI to be sure, but they had no restrictions regarding phone manufacturers and were OS-agnostic and the thought of a Linux phone didn’t put them off at all.