@David-TP  

I've had it a couple of nearly 18 months now , I was able to push through the 1.2.2 because of the recovery guide when setting the IP to 192.168.0.1 and doing the reset trick.  

It is working fine enough under 1.2.2 which still seems more advanced than the firmware the isp had put on the device.

Unfortunately it's the only Firmware under the size limit for the x50/55 that another tp-link member had mentioned in another post.

Is there really no way to just push a newer firmware to the device the same as what I did with the 192.168.0.1 web frontend? It seems crazy to ahve a file limit size and then basically say there is no way to forcibly put a firmware on a device because of rather poor checking procedure of checking region codes that end up just being hard coded by ISPs.

It is worth noting that many people on sell their ex. ISP deco's and then end up in the same boat of having an ISP Deco they can't neccessarily upgrade anymore (especially if not with the same ISP).  I think there needs to be a means to force firmware onto devices (at our own risk) as was done with the recovery otherwise ... people are getting trapped buying devices they didn't know were ISP locked devices and being stuck without being able to udpate for seurity etc.