The Hindu Business Line : Gazing into the crystal ball of IMS

Would you want to know if your friends think your ringback tone is old-fashioned? Have you taken a call only to get the question, "What was that song?," followed by a snigger. Soon you will be able to conduct a poll to determine the popularity of your ringback tone, thanks to IMS — IP-Multimedia Subsystem— the next generation of telecommunication networking.

Ringback tones, or caller-back tones are snippets of a song that replace the `tring tring' that you would hear if you called a mobile. These tones vary according to choice — from religious bhajans to the latest dance number, ringback tones are becoming a reflection of people's personality, says Mr Manish Kumar, Director - Marketing, NMS Communications India. This is the Bangalore division of the US-based NMS Communications, which is working on expanding the ringback tone offering. NMS hopes to introduce a `voting poll' service, which will send an SMS to every tenth caller, asking her opinion of your tone. "Ringback tone users can use the service to check if their personality is coming across badly," said Mr Kumar.

The company is also working on simplifying the selection of ringback tones. "With the advent of IMS, users will find it easier to search for the song of their choice. They can use the same song for both ring and ringback, and also store it to use as an MP3," said Mr Kumar.

SUCCESS AND BEYOND

The success of ringback tones is a tribute to the Indian telecommunication industry. Ringback tones have seen a parallel growth to ringtones, though they were introduced later. Last year alone, ringback tones contributed to 40 per cent of mobile music revenues, which stood at Rs 400 crore, said Mr Mandar Thakur, General Manager, Soundbuzz India. Soundbuzz is a Singapore-based music retailer. The company does content management of ringback tones for Hutch in India.

The industry is excited with the success as it represents a change in the Indian consumer behaviour, which has been mostly `aping the West' for decades now. "Indians tend to wait for a product to be a hit abroad, and then adopt it. But the success of ringback tones has come before the West," said Mr Prakash Bhalerao, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Verismo Networks, a US-based next generation technology firm.

With IMS around the corner, mobile application providers and 3G service providers are working around-the-clock to create more interactive and entertaining applications for the new generation of mobile consumers.

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