Ringback Tones – Not The Same As Ringtones
So just what are Ringback Tones? 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 ring back tone.
Technically, your ring back tone is a status indicator telling your caller that your line is available (ie., in service and not busy). Network connections through the telephony networks between the caller and the callee’s audio devices are either made, or will be available to be connected, and the phone call will complete.
If all goes well, then the call can either be answered by a person (as long as the called number is not busy, or if the number is busy, and the phone being called has a call waiting service which notifies the person occupying the line to hang up the call in process, or put it on hold, in order to answer the incoming call), or by an answering machine or a network-based voice processor. This is the default case if the line is busy and the user a) doesn’t have a call waiting service, or b) did not answer the incoming call within the (programmable) number of rings.
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 ring back tone is generated by summing a 440-Hz tone with a 480-Hz tone and applying these to the telephone line with 2 and 4 second alternating tones.
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 ring back 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 ring back tone starts and stops in time with the phone being called, except that it is out of phase – it rings when the caller hears the pause, etc.
So what’s so great about ring back tones? Well, rather than just hearing the same old boring ‘ring’, you can change this sound that your cell phone plays when people call your cell. The cell phone companies let you set the ring back(s) you want on your phone, and will then charge your cell phone bill a per ringback charge. The most popular options are rap, pop and classical music clips, although there are some sound clips also available.
The best thing about ringback tones is that 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.If you want to find out more information about setting up ring back tones on your cell phone, you can search for your cellphone carrier and ‘ringback tones’. (Source)
June 3rd, 2009 at 1:30 am |
[...] is different between ringtones and ringback tones; you can refer to older post about these differences. Now, I will describe about ringtones [...]