Ringback Tones

Ringback tones (RBTs) are the audio sounds heard by a caller while they wait for their connection to a called party to be completed.

Traditionally, ringback tones were fixed by the service provider and consisted of uninteresting ringing or beeping sounds. Today, personalized ringback tone services, also known as Color Ringback Tone (CRBT) services in some countries, allow subscribers to select the ringback sounds heard by their callers, giving them an innovative way to differentiate and express themselves to their friends and business contacts through favorite song clips or sounds.

Subscribers, using a web interface or their phone keypad, can easily specify or purchase personalized ringback tones from a library of offered songs, sound effects, or multi-lingual messages. Recent service innovations allow different ringback tones to be played by the network depending on the caller’s CLI (Caller Line Identification), as well as using video content as a ringback to video-enabled devices.

Ringback Tones are a Significant Market Opportunity

In the wireless industry, fashionable younger customers are already attracted to the personalization of downloadable ringtones for their 2.5G or 3G mobile handsets, resulting in a relatively new $1.5 billion dollar market. Personalized ringback tone services are a logical extension to this level of personalization and self-expression. However, unlike downloadable ringtones, ringback tones are a network-based service that can be offered by any service provider (not just mobile carriers), recorded in a higher quality than downloadable ringtones, and can be heard on any type of phoneset−including traditional POTS phones.

Initial deployments of ringback tone services have generated an unprecedented positive response from users who are opening their wallets to purchase the latest, trendy ringback sound, melody, or even video content. One service provider offering ringback tones achieved a 30% service penetration from their existing subscriber base in less then one year, and generated millions of dollars in incremental high-margin revenues.

Radisys Media Servers Offer High-Capacity VoIP Audio and Video Playback for Ringback Tone Solutions

Radisys Media Servers deliver a Multimedia Resource Function Processor (MRFP) compliant with the IMS architecture, and optimized for playing a large variety of tones, announcements, audio clips, or video content for ring back tone services. When controlled by a ring back application server, call agent, or a Call Session Control Function (CSCF), Radisys Media Servers can stream thousands of different audio or video RTP streams simultaneously to a large network of calling endpoints. Audio or video content can be stored internally, or streamed from a centralized media datastore using a variety of industry-standard codecs. Radisys Media Servers provide industry leading capacity and scalability for any wireline, wireless, or cable-based deployment of VoIP audio and video ringback tone services, along with the superior economics and flexibility of an IP-based multi-service solution.

Platform for Multiple Enhanced Services – Not just Ringback Tones

Once deployed in a ring back tone solution, Radisys multimedia processing capabilities can be reused across multiple enhanced services including push-to-talk, multimedia messaging, audio/video transcoding, network gaming, or speech-enabled portals. Multiple applications can control the same Radisys media server concurrently for all their media processing functions—even using different control protocols.

Growing list of Solution Partnerships and Deployments

Our focus on IP media servers eliminates any potential competitive overlap with our application solution partners, making us an ideal partner for ring back service application vendors looking to improve the scalability and economics of their solution offerings. Radisys already interoperates with many leading application vendors, with a growing list of deployments with leading service providers around the world.

Empower your Audio/Video Ringback Tone Solution with Radiys Media Servers

Radisys is a leader in developing IP media servers designed for rapid integration and payback in customer and solution partner ring back tone solutions. To learn more about improving the scalability of your ringback tone deployment, please contact Radisys today.