Chelle wrote: It turns out that deprioritization is not an issue. There are some LTE bands that are much slower than others and it all comes down to disabling those bands so that your phone only chooses from the faster bands.
Chelle, I would suggest deprioritization is very much the issue and you have figured out a way to work around it.
deprioritization works on a band level - its literally reducing your time to access the tower on the band so others can use it more than you.
This is what I think:
1. You have a lot of Verizon postpaid customers in your area, but they are not using band 5 (band 13 (700) is primary, then 4 (1700) after all)
2. You figured out a way to use B5 (850) and essentially work around deprioritization
Your connection quality will last as long as visible does not change their algorithm or band 5 in your area remains less crowded.