Entertainment Magazine: Promotional Offers: Ringtones: Ringback Tones

New international cellular phone feature: Ringback Tones- RBTs

When people call your cell phone, instead of a ring they hear music being played. This is a RBT, or Ring Back Tone, an international fad for phone ring substiutes.

Cell phone carriers, like Verizon Wireless, CIngular, T Mobile and Alltel, now enable subscribers to choose ringback tones (ring back tones) as a personalized servicefor their cell phone.

The ringback tone replaces the standard ringtone for your selected family and friends. Select a song for your callers to hear before you pick up the phone. Instead of the usual ring, the caller will hear the ringback tone you chose for them.

The main difference between ringtones and ringback tones is who hears the song.

With ringtones, the customer hears a select song instead of the standard phone ringing. When the customer install a ringback tone, the caller will hear the song instead of the phone ring.

Ringback tones can be purchased on the Internet or buy ringbacks over the phone by downloading a ringback from VZW Tones Deluxe application from Verizon Wireless, for example. Subscribers can set a particular song to play when a specific person calls.

Also, normal ringtones can be programmed to play during the day and ringback tones play at night for your callers. You can also set the ringbacktone to play on any given day of the week. Ringbacktones can be changed often. There may be an expiration to the ringback tone unless it is renewed.

Ringback tone services usually run about $1or less per song and may include a small yearly fee, depending on the phone carrier. You can probably purchase up to 100 ring back tones from your carrier, depnding on the capacity of your cell phone.

Macintosh (Apple computer) users can also subscribe to ringback tones, as well as almost all PC users. Check with your carrier for details. Mac users need to download Windows Media Player for the Mac.

Some ringback tones are available for text messaging. Audio selections for ringback tones could include not only music, but messages and special effects.

Ringback tones are also available in Spanish.

According to wikipedia; In the UK and many other Commonwealth countries, the ringback tone is a signature double beep, which has been made famous by being included at the end of Pink Floyd's "Young Lust." For most countries, it consists of a 0.4-second pulse, a 0.2-second pause, a 0.4-second pulse, and a 2-second pause.

In India, ringback tone is referred to as dailer tone. The first personalized ring-back tone service called Color Ring Back Tone (CRBT) is invented by a Korean company, Witcom in 2001 May and started first service with SK Telecom in Korea from 2002 April (wikipedia).