Why doesn't apple, ATT, verizon, etc just pay the company to license the technology?

If they patented it, and it is truly their innovation, then they should be compensated.

They may have patented it, but I doubt that it was their innovation.

Without looking it up I have no idea how long ago they got their patent. However, about 20 years ago I had a full length card in a PC at my computer store that served as my answering machine. It ran under MS-DOS and the answering machine portion ran as a TSR (Terminate but Stay Resident) program in the background. I could call in and retrieve my messages from any phone, but more importantly in regards to this patent, I could run another program on that computer and bring up a list of the calls and messages and listen to them selectively and in any sequence I chose as I picked from a menu.

This latter bit sounds exactly like what this patent claims to cover. Since I doubt this patent was issued almost 20 years ago, it means clear violation of prior art.

Since then a number of companies (going back to OS/2 and Windows 3.1 days) offered similar features using voice modems.

The only way this patent would up is if it covered REMOTELY accessing your voicemail and selectively listening to your message via a menu. None of the articles I've read about this company's lawsuits mentioned "remotely".

Sadly, I can't remember the name of the product I used back then. I THINK it was called "Y.E.S." or at least that was the name of the company. Can't seem to find it via Google but that makes sense as I'm pretty sure that the company folded well prior to the dot bomb.