Have you been wondering what people are talking about when you hear 'ringback tones'? Ringtones have been popular for ages, but this 'new ringtone' works in a slightly different way. In simple terms, when you call someone you usually will hear a beep letting you know that you have been connected and the phone is ringing - this is the ringback tone. Cellphone carriers have made it possible to customize the sound you hear to just about any song you can think of.
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.
Again, if we want 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 pattern.
The interference due to the difference in frequency between the two tones causes a 40-Hz beat, and the tone combination produces the common warbling "ring ... ring ... ring" sound. 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. Usually the ringback tone starts and stops at the same rate as the ringing tone of the called telephone, but generally is out of phase, i.e., one plays while the other is silent.
Finally we get to the fun part about ringback tones - rather than the standard 'ring ring' tone we just talked about above, cellphone carriers have made it possible to personalize the ringback tone that your cellphone service will play when a caller is waiting for you or your machine to pickup. A huge selection of current (as well as classic) music and audio clips are available for selection on your cellphone to play as the ringback tone. Customizing your ringback tones in this manner is available through subscription services with your particular carrier, and is generally billed as an additional charge per tone selected.
Now here is the best part - you can completely customize the ringback tones that your callers hear. What's even cooler is that you can choose ringbacks to suit each individual caller. Generally, you can pick up to around 100 ringback tones at any given time. Each one of these can be setup so that each of your callers hear different ring back tones. The other method of setting them up is to choose a tone to suit the time of day. This is most often used so that callers hear a 'work hours' and a 'non-work hours' ringback tone.
Setting up ringback tones on your cellphone is as easy as doing a websearch for your cellphone carrier and 'ringback tones'.
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