Re: What am I missing?
"And why did ATT need them or their method to do something one would guess was already well within ATT's capabilities"
For that part, I assume the answer is simply that it was cheaper and easier to contract it out to someone who already had a solution rather than building it from scratch themselves. When they figured out how much it would actually cost to license it, they changed their minds.
As for why it was patentable at all, obviously I don't know enough about the details to say anything for sure. But it does seem as though a system to group multiple normal phones as a single number, while also allowing them to behave as individual numbers when required, could require a very different solution from doing it for VOIP phones, so there may well be something deserving of a patent in there.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
