Today, Israeli Channel 10 (second largest TV Channel in Israel) with its Internet arm nana10 (www.nana10.co.il) launched a mobile video portal – *977. The digits 977 stand for the Hebrew word for “ten” which is the name of the channel.
The portal is based on 3G video calls (IVVR) that was built by Teleclal, an Israeli mobile services provider backed up by DSPV as a technological partner and Ugunduzi the IVVR services domain expert partner. Teleclal is the largest Israeli services provider with an offering in SMS, WAP, IVR, IVVR, and mobile content creation.
Teleclal group owns Telemesser, Appcell, Media Market, Media Direct, and more.The launch of this portal is meant to strengthen channel 10 and nana10 in their new media offering and is designed to broaden the reach to their audiences in the mobile medium.
IVVR (Interactive Voice and Video Response) is the technology that enables to deliver interactive video and services over a 3G video call.
The interaction (navigation) is done using the digits of the phone (DTMF).
The technology offers a solid business model (regular or premium charges on the call) with ease of use and requires no data connectivity (based on a call and not on internet browsing).
Because the IVVR services are based on a video call, the playing of videos is immediate (no buffering) and the video can be interactive (where in the mobile internet the playing is done in a dedicated player that allows no interaction with the video).
The technology is very attractive for media services and other interactive services but still suffers from low adoption in most markets and the video quality shows signs of the compression that is needed in order to serve videos on the 64Kbit/s dedicated channel.
The low adoption of the technology is caused by the problematic balance in the market between infrastructure vendors, mobile operators, and services providers.
Now, with a high penetration rate of 3G phones the relevance of the IVVR is growing and so is the number of commercial launches.
With the launch of Channel 10’s portal added to the existing services of Blockbuster and movie distribution companies, Israel becomes a leading market for IVVR services.
Talkingmobile compliments Idan Gafni, owner of Ugunduzi and a professional adviser to this blog on this major launch.
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October 17th, 2008 at 12:53 am
I have been in technology for over a decade and i truly think this innovation is part of the changing landscape of our global commerce. Very soon this technology will be able to handle all transaction activity from the transmission of documents, to international conferences that move business forward through the creation of partners, new customers, and associations that are dedicated to the mission of anything from ending the global water shortage to establishing a visionary panel of experts to help with the forward movement of transformation in the e-commerce arena.