Verizon Ringback Tones

When it comes to your cellphone, the coolest thing you can add these days are "verizon ringback tones". But how do I get ringback tones on my verizon wireless phone? And where do I find them? Well, lets just start with some background; The first thing you need to know is that a ringback tone and ringtone are very different things ... well, they are similar, but still pretty different. One you hear when someone calls you and your phone starts to ring. That's your ringtone.




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 ringback tone.

Another way to explain it is that it is a status indication that the number dialed is available (ie in service and not busy). This requires that the proper connections through the relevant telephony network or networks between the caller and the callee's audio devices are either made, or are available to be made, and the phone call will be connected if the call is picked up - either by an answering service or a person.

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.

The actual sound of a ringback tone will depend on your country and/or carrier. Again, to get technical, in North America (United States and Canada), which are within the North American Numbering Plan (NANP), the standard PSTN ringback tone is generated by summing a 440-Hz tone with a 480-Hz tone and applying these to the telephone line in a two-second on and four-second off rhythm.

The tone combination produces a warbling "ring ... ring ... ring" sound, caused by the 40-Hz beat, or interference due to the difference in frequency, between the two tones. The ringback 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. The ringback tone generally starts and stops at the same rate as the ringing tone of the called telephone, but generally is out of phase, i.e., staggered in time.

Finally we get to the fun part about ringback tones - rather than the standard 'ring ring' tone we just talked about above, cellphone carriers have made it possible to personalize the ringback tone that your cellphone service will play when a caller is waiting for you or your machine to pickup. A huge selection of current (as well as classic) music and audio clips are available for selection on your cellphone to play as the ringback tone. Customizing your ringback tones in this manner is available through subscription services with your particular carrier, and is generally billed as an additional charge per tone selected.

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.

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