I naively added a new phone to my personal AT&T Family Plan, not realizing the hell I would encounter trying to port a number from a different market for the new phone.

Reading posts on this site and others, it seems that NBI is the solution, but that a wide rollout of NBI for consumers has been stalled for years. It seems some customers have had luck cajoling their way into business NBI accounts so they could mix numbers from different markets, and some subset of those have then been able to convert back to personal NBI so that they could regain OLAM, or add a FAN, etc.

I'm wondering if there is any shortcut through this maze of semi-deceit, whereby I could find some department at AT&T willing to convert me directly to a personal NBI account, so that I can mix numbers from different markets.

One call center rep hinted that this is somewhere on the roadmap for general release, but she couldn't give me any idea as to when.

The issues at this point appear to be ones of policy more than technology, and that frustrates me all the more.

Any advice is greatly appreciated.