It is not hard to see that a war broke in Gaza and in the south of Israel.
Wars and other events like elections (latest elections in the US and the coming elections, here, in Israel)  have a great impact on the media.
The TV, the Internet, and the mobile enjoy from the popularity of these events and from the demand of the public to get updated all the time.
Back to the present war in Gaza, the internet is taking a crucial  part and in UGC (User Generated Content) sites like youtube and twitter the war appears in many videos and posts, partly news and partly propaganda. The war is also present in the virtual world.
Moreover, the IDF spokesman understand the power of those tools and opened its own account .
But I would like to take a quick look at the Israeli mobile market in the current War.
First of all there are SMS services, SMS is still the most common simple way to get the updates, news sites use SMS to send updates on a daily basis on the events in a subscription based services.
Next are the carriers websites who opened a special channel for residents that live in the south, the sites contain information about the nearest shelters, information and guidance form the HFC (Home Front Command) and free past time activities.
The news section broadcasts hourly news flash and live broadcasts in special occasion via 3G connection.
TV stations also created video portals based on IVVR technology.
Ugunduzi published in their blog [IVVR Services] a post named “IVVR News” where they state that in Israeli channel 10′s IVVR portal ” thousands of IVVR calls were handled in just a few hours” using promotion that is done during the news on TV in a text scroller on the bottom of the screen.
We hope that peace will soon come to the region and that mobile users will consume happier news.

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.