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Comment by AlphaWeaver | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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 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.

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

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

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

They do this pretty much everywhere.

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