AT&T's Cascade Sounds like Grand Central and iotum Take 2

Today I read in re:Code about a new AT&T Foundry experiment, called Cascade. In reading through description I couldn't help but think about it being the second coming of Grand Central, the company started by Crag Walker and Vincent Paquet who now are the team behind UberConference.

Cascade is at the core just really find me, follow me, albeit a very advanced version. But to me, and those who look at it from a historical perspective, it's not really a new idea. Going back, even before there was GrandCentral (which was a client all the way up through and for a short while after acquisition by Google) there was Alec Saunders and Howard Thaw's company, iotum, which we also helped launch, and which now is also in the conferencing business with Calliflower and other conferencing brands. Back in 2006 Saunders and Thaw debuted Pronto at DEMO where the core idea was intelligence in the way calls were handled.

With Cascade the difference isn't what Cascade does but the devices it moves calls between.

To see the the news about Cascade eight years later brings back memories of the era where VoIP was at the core of IP real time communications. The idea of apps and services coming from third parties and not the telco was what led to the concept of OTT (over the top). Now today, what we're seeing is not so much what's new, as what we're seeing and hearing from the telcos seems to tie back to an approach I dubbed "Me Too, Me Also, Me Different" a theme that others picked up on.

Cascade is a good idea. It's one that AT&T will provide to IoT and connected car technology suppliers with the ability to send calls to them....and by the time the get there, Google with the combination of Nest, GoogleVoice, Android, Hangouts, Maps and their smarts will already have been delivering it. as part of Google Now.

Comments

[Jim Courtney]

With Rogers One Number you can call my BlackBerry Z30 but I may answer on my PC's (Windows or Mac), my iPhone 5, my iPad Air or my Android tablet. I can switch a call between devices; also one can make outbound calls over that number from any of these devices. And I receive and send my SMS messages via the RON application as well. When traveling through Europe earlier this year, with a WiFi connection, I could also use RON to make free calls back to Canada.