Usually, when you think of ringback tones you think of music played while waiting for the other side to pick up the phone and answer the call. But there's more to ringback tones than that! I have already covered in the past some study cases of operators who took the ringback tone to the next level with very creative types of content which are not necessarily music. What I haven’t thought of before is using the ringback tone to let your caller know your location!
The Broadband in India blog brings the following story of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) which “has also told the mobile companies to provide a special ring back tone to the calling party when a person is on roaming. This would benefit them as the caller would realize that the person he/she is calling is not in his hometown. TRAI said in its statement: “Mobile users can activate this facility before going abroad. This will enable minimizing calls when on international roaming, if the calling party exercises restraint.”"
[via Broadband in India : India Broadband and Telecom Blog]
I really hope to see more creative ways to leverage ringback tones to provide better services for the ringback tones users. Nice work!
Xen, that's fascinating, a location-based ringback tone. I don't know if this is relevant, but I know that some of the carriers here in the States, instead of simply having music, allow you to use celebrity voices as greetings that lead into the artist' song.
Admittedly, most are rappers and sound pretty ghetto, but it's kind of a neat idea. Kind of like way back in the day when you could buy a tape of celebrity recordings for your answering machine.
Posted by: Ricky Cadden | Wednesday, March 14, 2007 at 16:18