In my opinion, Verizon has the best nationwide network in the US. But Verizon also charges more than any other carrier, by far. Their prices and nit-picking added charges are outright offensive. So I use Mint Mobile. With just my one line, I save a hundred dollars every month that way. Just the taxes on Verizon are higher than Mint Mobile’s entire rates. Ninety-nine percent of the time, I am in a big city. The Mint service is nearly one-hundred percent reliable there. When I travel to a small town, sometimes I don’t have service there. Usually that’s when I am on vacation and don’t want to be reachable then anyway. In the rare event that my car breaks down along side of the road and there is no cell coverage, I have a ham radio and can make a call for help on an autopatch. It seems like a matter of principal not to pay Verizon’s extortion rates. If everyone used other carriers, Verizon would have to compromise on their prices.
If you really must use Verizon on your Librem 5, use a mainstream phone to activate your Sim card. Then simply move the Sim card to your L5 after you’ve already seen it work on the other phone. You may have to configure the APN settings on the L5 manually. Someone needs to write a spoofing program for the L5 that identifies the L5 as another phone of your choice. Otherwise the Sim switching may quit working after Verizon catches on. It seems like that kind of spoof might be legal if you own the other phone you identify the L5 as.