@lordmoneybag
You are much more patient with your compatibility-locked product than I would be.
I would've rooted the phone right away. Imagine buying a new car but the manufacturer locked the hood or the gas tank and only gave the keys to licensed partners. Removing the lock or forging your own key is the best solution. Once you buy the product you should be able to own it, the manufacturer already took your money and doesn't have any claim to ownership anymore.
If rooting isn't an option - because the phone will be given to grandma or something - then I would get a different phone, one already known to work properly on the network.
If buying another phone isn't an option - because phones cost money - then I would have to switch carriers. Because it's already costing money every month, already paying for data which isn't being used.
Delaying this decision doesn't fix anything. It's an old problem which has been bothersome since Android 7, it's a problem which has affected thousands of users and millions of phones by now, it's extremely unlikely that anyone is going to devise a quick easy working solution which has continued to evade so many people for so many years.
