With the talk of cell phones and towers, I thought I'd tell a little story.
I do have several cell phones - less for communication than a handy repository for music and other stuff. My go-to cell phones are both from Asia - both have eye protection features and one has, in fact, an e-ink display. That's because of a medical condition I have.
Both also support VOLTE (LTE calls) and one supports 5G.
Well, my carrier is phasing out 3G, and it turns out that they have a strict whitelist of allowed phones for VOLTE services. My calls, when I do them, drop the network down to 3G (which I hadn't noticed - that's how much I use voice calling). I've just been informed that effective next month, the carrier will charge a premium for 3G use, and it will go away within a year.
It turns out that most phones aren't compatible with my carrier's VOLTE; basically, only phones that the carrier sells will work on the network. Talk about unethical business practices! The CRTC way back in the 2000 and teens mandated that all cell phones sold in Canada had to be sold unlocked (to force competition), and this is one way of getting around that edict.
As far as I can tell, no other Canadian carrier does this. I just verified that my phones should work with the other major carrier in the country, and can go into one of their stores and use a test SIM to check out that claim.
So in the grand spirit of competition, I will do just that, and if they work, will be switching carriers. I will also let my current carrier (Telus) know why I am switching.
It took me a long time to find an eye friendly cell phone (the e-ink one) and I'll be darned if I have to give it up due to anti-competition actions on the part of a large corporation.
I've not had to be concerned over special display types or anything, but have had to buy a new (or used) phone numerous times over the past decade. Primarily due to changing service providers. I think the only time I've ever purchased a phone directly from the service provider was when I switched to Visible, last years model (2025 Moto G) but it was only about $100.
I always go for the budget priced phone plans and Visible has been the best service I've ever had (at least so far, I guess it's been about a year with Visible now). Free hotspot, internet rarely if ever seems to lag, uses Version network, and it's cheap. I got in with the first two years for $20 a month, after that it's $25 a month.
Don't know if your phone is supported but might be worth a look.
Canada has its own series of networks and carriers.
My beef was that even though my particular phone was supported in hardware, the carrier I'm using blacklisted it because they never sold it (to encourage you to purchase a phone through them, of course).
I've just switched carriers, and the new one has far less restrictive policies. As long as your phone supports their network frequencies, it will work. No blacklisting.
My old carrier (Telus) is also, as a result, restricting international tourism use. Visitors to the country can't bring their existing phone and just add a SIM card. They're shooting themselves in the foot.
Ah well. Lots of far more important things happening the world these days than a company skirting CRTC regulations.