The Fad For Cellphones Is Ringback Tones
What are Ringback Tones?? Technically, a ringback tone is “an intermittent audible indication to the calling party that a dialed telephone number is ringing.”? So what this is saying is that when you call someone you usually will hear a beep letting you know that you have been connected and the phone is ringing.
A more technical explanation is that the ringback tone is a status indication that the number dialed is available (ie the receiving line is in service and not busy). This requires that the proper connections through the network or networks between the caller and the callee’s audio devices are either made, or are available to be made, and the phone call will be connected if the call is picked up – either by an answering service or a person.
Once the call has been answered, or the call goes to an answering machine or voice mail, the ringback tone stops playing. The physical sound that the ringback tone makes depends on the cellphone network, as well as the country of the person being called.
The actual sound of a ringback tone will depend on your country and/or carrier. Again, to get technical, in North America (United States and Canada), which are within the North American Numbering Plan (NANP), the standard PSTN ringback tone is generated by summing a 440-Hz tone with a 480-Hz tone and applying these to the telephone line in a two-second on and four-second off rhythm.
The tone combination produces a warbly “ring … ring … ring” sound, caused by the 40-Hz beat, or interference due to the difference in frequency, between the two tones. The ringback tone may be generated by the switch serving either the called party or the calling party, but it is not generated by the called telephone instrument or PBX. The ringback tone generally starts and stops at the same rate as the ringing tone of the called telephone, but generally is out of phase, i.e., staggered in time.
Now for the best part – instead of just hearing the standard ring when you call someone on their cellphone, the wireless companies have programmed things so that you can choose the sound that the caller hears when they call your cell. The most popular option for these ‘ringback’ tones are current popular music, although some general audio clips can also be selected. You choose the ringbacks you want on your phone through the subscription service you have with your cellphone carrier. Currently each ringback will have an associated charge on your cellphone bill.
You can customize the tone played depending on the caller – it is possible to select up to 100 or so active ringback tones at any given time, each programmed so that different callers hear different tones/songs/clips, or programmed so that different tones will play dependent on the time of day.
For more information about customizing your cellphone service to play ringback tones you can often find the menu commands with a websearch for your cellphone carrier and ‘ringback tones’.
