E-com portal needs no introduction for anyone who uses internet. E-com has at least revolutionised the way we buy tickets to traveling, if not our groceries!

Now, with advent of 3G services by telecom operators and affordability of 3G enabled phone with dual camera, we can hope to see IVVR portal for e-com portal! It will be an one step ahead of IVR E-com portal I wrote in my recent post. IVVR portal takes care of all drawbacks one faces in using normal web based e-com portal and IVR based e-com portal! Still, IVR e-com portal will score over everything for those people with visual disabilities though!

IVVR(Interactive Voice and Video Response) e-com portal could be accessed by any 3G enabled mobile phone, they can surf any products, be a T-shirt or latest sports car! He can even do test drive a car virtually! It will revolutionize the way one buys a cinema ticket! It has already done, I hope where SpeechStorm has implemented IVVR for movie ticketing in Etisalat. First watching trailers of the available movies and then deciding to book tickets from comfort of home with family or even in office cafeteria with friends, sounds very interesting and appealing to me!

How about buying your favorite shirt on IVVR E-com portal where you check out many shirts as per your choice ? How about entering your size, colour, prints, budget etc. find your desired shirts quickly and smartly? Best part is you can do this from comfort of your drawing room, without any fear from those suicide bombing at malls.

Everything looks awesome about IVVR based e-com portal where one can browse through products quickly and buy instantly. One may not go to mall, spend hours in browsing through products. Though spending time in malls with family and friend may be good leisure, but it may not remain so, specially with shrinking family time as well as security concern. Through IVVR e-com portal, one will be able to ‘try’ the products which a web based e-com portal was unable to provide!

But, the major problem with IVVR is its dependency on 3G networks. Though 3G networks are present in many countries including India, but it has not penetrated to the mass yet. But we can surely hope, it will penetrate soon. Because of this, no one can guess how telecom operator will charge 3G usage. Because, most probably, everyone would be using various IM for making voice calls instead of making ‘plain old voice cal’ in the age of 3G. But if telecom operators offer some unlimited scheme per month, there should be some interest in setting up and usage of IVVR e-com portal. Otherwise it will remain just a hobby of tech savvy people, not a mass consumer item!

But IVVR as technology and IVVR E-Com portal as application surely look exciting!

There has been lot of talk about video IVR or IVVR ( Interactive Voice and Video response System) recently. Dialogic also has announced recently of their availability of Beta DiaStar™ Server, Version 1.1, “Allowing developers to create video applications for fixed and mobile phones. this brings into variety of existing video features into open source marketplace.” (Dialogic Press release) Indeed a good news for large open source Asterisk IVR/IVVR developers.

Dialogic Releases Beta DiaStar

Dialogic is no doubt the leader in the field of CTI boards, Telephony Signaling products in the world and this initiative by Dialogic to make their existing Video enabled products accessible by open source developer community will boost the development of video IVR applications.

Now, can Video IVR or IVVR can be the next big VAS for Telecom operators ?

I think so and here are my reasons:-

1. 3G is available
3G has been introduced almost everywhere in the world including big Telecom market India by state run mobile service providers BSNL ( Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited) and MTNL ( Mahanagar Telecom Nigam Limited). MTNL operates in two big Indian metros New Delhi and Mumbai while BSNL operates all circles in India other than New Delhi and Mumbai. 3G is the requirement for video call in the mobile network and 3G enabled phone is the requirement at the user end. 3G enabled mobile phone with twin camera for video calls have been in the market for long time now. Also entry level 3G enabled with camera is now available at less than $100, even in India. So using video applications or services by large number of users is a reality in India.

2. Innovative Video Application
Think about getting an SMS alert about Mahendra Singh Dhoni’s huge six with a link to make video call to watch it! Or an SMS alert informing about Irphan Pathan getting out Ricky Ponting out by a yorker ? Who in India or in Indian subcontinent want to miss it ? Video IVR creates possibility of many innovative video application which will entice user to avail video value added services! If YouTube could be such a hit, video IVR with large contents and innovation would also be hit!

3. Concept of citizen journalism or citizen activism
People are getting used to the idea citizen journalism now. With video IVR, there will be people who would be uploading video footage about events immediately for large audience which will be available simultaneously on internet, TV or mobiles of any 3G users!

4. Customer care
Video IVR may revolutionize customer care and call center industry! With video call, many problems by customers could be solved remotely as proper instruction could be provided to the customer for self-help. Frustration with traditional voice based IVR where they are made to speak to machine, by customers would also reduce as through video IVR, they can discuss with customer care executives face to face!

5. Video Advertising, blogging, cinema etc.
Video blogging can be expected to increase by many fold! Video portal would have much larger audience with 3G users. People would be able to watch trailer on movies before they buy a ticket for it over video IVR! SMS advertising would give away to video advertising now! Watch TV advertising on your mobile!

6. Utility Services
A user will be able to video weather conditions live at any place! Phone banking will be replaced by video banking which will make it more secure as well as personal! It will be very useful in healthcare industry where specialist would be able to instruct many locations simultaneously from a remote location!

So, innovation and ideas are many for video IVR applications! So, if video IVR is introduced after 3G, it may be the next big VAS ( Value added service) for mobile operators!

Almost one year back on 28th August 2008, I started a poll in this site to try to know how many people use Dialogic CTI boards as well as other CTI boards. I have concluded the poll today, 5th September 2009. The question of the poll was :

Which CTI card you use for your IVR Applications ?

And the options were :
1. Dialogic
2. Synway
3. Pika
4. AudioCodes
5. TelcoBridge

I forgot to include two more important CTI manufacturer Digium and Donjin. I future, I think I would conduct another poll about these two CTI boards. Digium is wide famous for Asterix.
Not many people voted in the poll! Only 28 people voted. 3 registered users and 25 guests. Total number of vote was 40 as one voter could select more than option.

A good percentage of 18 votes went for Dialogic(64%). I was expecting it to be more than 80% though! Second position was occupied by Synway with 14 votes(50%). Pika technologies came 3rd with 6 votes(21%) and other two got 1 vote (4%) each.

I think low voter turn out must be due to poor visibility of the poll. Last one year has been quite a learning experience, this year I hope to organise more meaningful polls as well as better voter turnout.

What is a Video IVR or IVVR ( Interactive Voice and Video Response System) ?

This is nothing but IVRS ( Interactive Voice Response System), but it also has video. So essentially the calling terminal has to have video screen as well as video playing capability! It also requires high bandwidth, so existing POTS (Plain Old Telephone System) or 2G mobile phones can not be used to make a call to IVVR Server.  IVVR is essentially for 3G or 4G Mobile Phones.

So IVVR seems to be quite new concept! But with its description in WikiPedia, seems it may have major application in the field of Tele-Medicine or Telehealth!

It can take inputs or commands from users either in the form of DTMF or Voice Recognition.

It can also be used in Voice Portal to deliver users many exciting services like instant cricket video update, live sports update, watch few interesting TV programs, catch up with TV Live Breaking news! It will also be used in live interactive multi-player games!

Overall IVVR seems an quite interesting development, enhancement in IVR Applications. Since Video will be delivered to user handset as Video Call, it eliminates requirement of processing the video feed for different 3G phones!

APEX Voice Communications, Inc. is one such company which has Video IVR Solutions.