Comcast Patent Gets the Drop on Mobile

Offering another hint about its evolving mobile voice strategy, Comcast has recently locked up a patent that describes a method and a system that supports re-establishing a dropped call or communication. The patent (No. 9,060,258 -- “Callback tokens for dropped calls), was filed on June 4, 2013, and issued on June 16, 2015. Comcast principal engineer Ross Gilson is listed as the inventor. “Experiencing too many dropped communications is often one of the most common customer complaints received by service providers,” the patent notes in the description of the problem it's trying to solve. “Service providers have attempted to address the complaint in various ways, including expansion of their home network coverage, increased cell capacity, and offering refunds for individual dropped calls.”

The patent goes on to describe a token-based system that’s used to re-established dropped calls using in-band or out-of-band signaling. “If the call or communication drops, the terminal possessing the token then initiates communication to the other terminals,” the patent filing explains. “In addition, a plurality of tokens may be used when there are more than two terminals in a call. The terminals may be partitioned into groups, where one of the terminals in each group possesses a token."