Ringback tones are audible that you can have your callers listen to when they call you. In simple words ringback tone has replaced the boring ‘tring tring’ that a calling person would hear when they place a call.
Ringback tones come in a variety of options. Ringback tones could be monophonic, polyphonic, MP3/CD audio, or even dialogs from famous actors and actresses. Besides, ringback tone could also be a customized tone, that the user can recode in his/her own voice and have the people who call them listen to it. This was indeed very interesting when it was first launched. Imagine, you place a call (dial a number) and instead of the boring ‘tring tring’, you get to listen ‘summer of 69’ as the ringback tone. Wouldn’t that be great?
This service is a value addition offered by the phone service provider. Hence the service provider charges a nominal fee for offering this service. But one can also get complimentary and sometimes free ringback tones from various sources on the internet.
A majority of the well known providers including Verizon, Cingular etc offer this service now. Ringback tones were very popular in Asia around the time when they were first introduced. It is called as caller tones in some places. The mobile phone industry experts predicted a 2% increase in the every month phone bill because of the ringback tone service and this meant an increase in the revenue that these companies would earn.
Ringback tone is especially popular among the youth. But ringback tones have also found their place in the corporate market. Corporate customers are getting really interested in this service since they can play their corporate jingle, or flog a product launch, or even put in some promotional content. Ringback tone facility can also be customized depending on the number that has been called. So, depending on that, various departments can play various tracks. For example, the customer service can play their contact info track, the sales can play their advertising track, office desk can play spoken-works track, etc.
Ringback tones have brought back the excitement into the mobile phone industry. But just a gentle reminder, do not override the copyrights of any tune that you download from the internet.
