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Comment by xepbam57 | Hacker News Reader

Have anybody thought why you hear the sound(beeeep-beeeeep-....) when you make a call and from where it comes? Yes, telco can put anything there. Even more, I wounder why we do not hear some commercial Ad's every time we call. This would be in a spirit of current times...

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Indeed! Verizon, a carrier in the US, actually made a product out of this by allowing people to buy what they branded "Ringback Tones" which would play some song or tune when someone called your number and you hadn't picked up yet. Not sure if it's still a thing.

The ringback tones were immensely popular in China. Nowadays it has faded in popularity.

Same thing in India, though I was there a while ago. People seemed to love setting it to the some song from a recent movie. It was about a dollar a month, decent income for the telcos, I'd imagine.

They were pushed heavily by operators in (parts of?) Europe in the mid 2000's, back when every other TV ad was for Jamba ringtones. I was on the operator "Three" and they let you set your ringback tone to "3 Is A Magic Number" for free much to the chagrin of absolutely everyone who called me.

I have a friend who works at Verizon and still has a ringback tone.

You can still get them, they just hide them away in a corner of Verizon's site now.

They're called "caller tunes" in India. Used to be really popular a few years ago. Now they're a bit less common.

They are. All those Emergency numbers you call to see if school is canceled are really ringback tones. It's how many people can call at once to receive the message w/o hearing a busy tone.

I never would have thought of that but it makes sense

> how many people can call at once to receive the message w/o hearing a busy tone.

And yet, by calling the same (typically toll-free) number, a call center's worth of support calls can be handled simultaneously.

Implementing this as ringbacks would not seem to be the only way.

Well, of course if you are willing to pay the phone company for multiple lines and install an expensive phone system you can waste a tone of money doing it other ways.

They do this pretty much everywhere.

Some of the mobile carriers in the U.K. have provided the option to change the dialing tone when people call you for a good few years. I think it was limited to a preselected list of songs though.

Don't give them ideas please :-)

In Denmark, we have "THREE IS THE MAGIC NUMBER... YES IT IS. IT'S THE MAGIC NUMBER. []" "song" when dialling others while using the 3 Mobile telco operator.

And now, think of an idea that they also can play any audio ADs , like on FM radio, while you are waiting for other side to answer. :-)

Does anyone know who is listening to YOU when that ring tone comes?

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