Forced roaming has been FOUND and much talked about. The process below can be used to forced roam virtually any Sprint phones. This is NOT my idea, but someone else's. So, I can't take the credit (or the blame) should it work or not work for you. See link for actual posting:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/show...6&postcount=18
But here is a repost of KERKEDAGAIN's discovery at xda-developers forum:
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Alright folks..I think i may have stumbled upon a workaround to force roaming!!
Procedure:
1. Download and install the diagnostics drivers for the Hero
2. Download the latest version of QPST (i'm using 2.7 build 323)
3. On your phone make sure USB debugging is turned on and push ##3424# in your phone keypad
4. Plug your phone in via USB and install the diagnostics drivers when prompted
5. If you've installed the drivers correctly, you should be able to go to Device Manager in control panel and see it registered as a COM port/USB diagnostic device
6. Next open QPST Service Programming>Connection>New. You should see your phone/COM port and you obviously choose that.
7. Choose "Read from phone" in the lower left hand of the window, after which you'll be prompted for your service programming code/MSL (Google your way to find it if you don't already have it)
8. Whence you have entered that code you'll see your phone info around
9. Go to the System tab (5th tab in my setup)
10. NOW..what worked for me was this setup: Preferred Mode:
Digital Only (upon further investigation, apparently "Automatic" works as well) Band Preference:
A Only (as a side note B Only worked for me as well) Roam Preference:
Automatic
11. Press Write to Phone
12. Reboot your phone
That should do it!! If alls done right you should see the familiar Roam triangle over your service bars! Hope it works fer ya..to change back from roaming only change everything back to Automatic.
*DISCLAIMER*: I've been messing around with my phone's service programming quite a bit so this may only work for me cuz of some erroneous change I made to the internals. Also I've only tried this in an area that I know I can get signal at, so whether it is TRULY roaming, I don't know. All I do know is that it says Roaming in my phone's Status
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It worked for me, on both my Samsung Instinct and my HTC Hero phones. Good luck!