Ringbacks

If you are like me, your cellphone is probably about the top accessory that you own. It is no wonder, because this is how you communicate with the world. You call your friends, family, work, home. And in turn everyone phones you. Unless we choose to go off-line, we can be connected to the rest of the world 100% of the time. There is no longer any time or place that we need to be disconnected. This puts us on call twenty-four hours a day. That is a big part of your life ... and my approach to this non-stop cellphone connectedness is to add some interest and fun.

So how do I mean add interest and fun to my cellphone? Well, there's no big secret - like most of the world you probably already have an assortment of media and applications on your mobile phone. The list of perks that you can carry around with you on your cellphone include ringtones, mp3s, pictures, video and games. These are all great and all, but you may not be aware that there are even more cool features you can add to your phone. The one that I have made this blog specifically about is something called ringback tones.

You might have your cellphone outfitted with a nice set of mp3s for when you are waiting for the bus, you may have already downloaded or created, uploaded and downloaded all sorts of ringtones, but if you haven't yet installed ringback tones on your cellphone, you aren't truly taking advantage of the the cool features that cellphone providers make available.

These are the ringing tones that someone who calls you hears. When they are waiting for you to pickup, or waiting until your answering machine to pickup, usually your caller just hears a 'ring .... ring ....ring'. When you install ringback tones (also known as caller tones, or answer tones in case you are wondering), your caller will instead hear the tone or song that you specify. The cool thing is that you can program different ringbacktones for different numbers, or different times of day, or just have your tones rotate no matter who is calling.

Different name for Ringback Tones

Here is a list of the name that different carriers have for ringbacks. Essentially the service is the same between each carrier, although their menus for installing and programming will be slightly different between them all.
  • Verizon Wireless - Ringback Tones
  • Sprint PCS -
  • AT&T (including formerly Cingular) - Answer Tones
  • Sprint Nextel - Call Tones
  • Bell Mobility - Caller Ring Tunes
  • T-Mobile - Caller Tones
  • Rogers - Caller Ring Trax
It doesn't matter which provider you have your cellphone package with, all of them carry an excellent assortment of music, including new releases and old standards. Just like ringtones, ringback tones are big business for the phone companies, so they are not going away. Most phones will allow you to select individual tones for different callers. That means you can play current pop tunes for your friends, and country tunes for your folks.

Anyway, that's all I have to say about ringback tones for today. Next post perhaps I'll research the latest ringback news and write about some interesting news updates.