Ringback Tones Update Your Cellphone
It sometimes seems like keeping up with all the new cellphone trends and features is a full time job. There is no doubt that cellphone manufacturers and cellphone provider companies are always developing new ideas to keep cellphones fresh. Ringback tones is the latest new cellphone feature that lets you personalize your cellphone, sort of in the same way that ringtones did, but with a few minor changes.
Ringback tones is the name that Verizon Wireless gives to this new cellphone service. If you are with T-Mobile, they are called Caller Tunes, AT&T calls their service Answer Tones, and Sprint’s service is called Call Tones. If you are in Canada, Bell Mobility has Caller Ring Tunes, and Rogers calls their ringback service Caller Ring Trax. So what are they? It is a sound or song that you set to play when someone calls you. Where they would normally hear the phone ringing, they now hear whatever you choose for them to hear.
This means that you will never hear your own ringback tones, that is unless you call your own answering machine, and you have ringtones turned on for more than just certain numbers. Which leads me to the next cool way you can use this feature. You can use many different tones if you want, and set each one to play for different people, or play at different times of the day. Or you could choose to setup a playlist of songs that will play randomly when people call. Like you have your own little radio station in your phone!
Now that you know what it is, how do you get them? I think most people are probably familiar with ringtones, the older brother to ringback tones by now. You use your phone or a computer to surf to your carriers website where you can choose a ringtone to download. It gets downloaded to your phone, and your account is charged. Then you can use your phone menu to select this ringtone for certain callers or events (such as an alarm).
If you go to download ringback tones, you have to be aware that you aren’t downloading them to your phone the same way that you do with ringback tones. What you are doing is actually downloading them to your account on your cellphone providers servers. Ringbacks work a bit differently than ringtones - ringtones physically play on your phone when someone calls. But with ringback tones, since the person hearing it is the person calling you, your cellphone provider needs to have this ringback tone on their system so it can be played when someone is trying to connect to your cell number. Therefore it needs to be on their server, just like your answering machine message is on their server. The bottom line is that you still download ringback tones to your account, and then from there you are able to choose which ringback plays when and for who.
Adding the ringback feature to your phone bill isn’t free - it will cost from $1.49 - $1.99 per month, and then you need to buy each ringback tone that you want downloaded to your account. Ringback tones typically cost $.99 to a few dollars, and remember that they will expire eventually, anywhere from a month to a year. Even with the extra cost I think this is a great feature to let you have some fun with your cell, and personalize what people hear when they call you.
To find out more information, click here or visit the website My Ringback Tones.



