Launches Internationally Successful Ring Back Tone Service For Its Customers  

HYDERABAD, 2004: AirTel, India’s leading mobile service, has announced the launch of the Ring Back Tone service. AirTel would market the facility made available to both pre paid and post paid customers as “Hello Tunes”. Ring back tone service is a personalized mobile music service where the caller hears songs and other sound clips instead of the traditional switchboard “ring-ring” tone. The launch of the service by AirTel would thus redefine a customer’s mobile experience by offering him the best technology trends prevalent internationally. With this launch, AirTel becomes the first service provider in the country to offer the IN based Ring back tone service. The innovative service has the unique ability to differentiate various call conditions like user busy, no answer, phone unreachable, phone switch off, call forwarding. In addition, the Hello Tune service can also be (de) provisioned by the customer himself.

The Hi-tech network based Hello Tunes service has been initially launched by AirTel in Delhi and Karnataka, to be subsequently expanded to other cities nationally. The service would be made available in 6 different languages (English, Hindi, Telugu, Tamil, Punjabi & Kannada) along with the latest songs from each of these languages. The Hello Tune service also opens a whole new world for the Music Industry as it introduces a web based content module where songs and sound bytes can be deposited, previewed and edited before being exclusively released to AirTel customers.

Announcing the launch of the service, Mr. Atul Bindal, Group CMO & Director, Mobility, Bharti Tele-Ventures, said, “The AirTel Hello Tune service is being launched in association with our strategic alliance partners, Bharti Telesoft and WiderThan.com, an affiliate of SK Telecom. I am confident that the internationally popular service would usher in a new era of technological innovation and would redefine the mobile experience of all our customers. To make this happen at an even faster pace, we also intend to involve the Indian music industry in this endeavor”.

With a higher level of end user customization made possible, the launch of Hello Tunes would make a mobile phone a true representative of its user’s personality. AirTel’s Hello Tunes Service enables a customer to replace his traditional Ring Back Tone, with a personalized sound file. To access the personalized service, a customer just needs to dial “678” and then choose a hit song or a sound clip or even a joke etc. The chosen tone can then be assigned to specific callers and / or for all callers. The Hello Tune service comes with a rental of just Rs 30 per month. The service is also backed with a wide range of content including the latest Hindi and English songs priced at Rs 15 per download

In countries like South Korea, Philippines & Thailand, the Ring Back Tone service has gained immense popularity. Looking especially at the South Korean example, the service contributes three times more revenue than other services like download of ring tones and wallpapers and enjoys a penetration level of almost 40 per cent. 

According to, Mr. Jonathan Kim, VP of Global Marketing Division, WiderThan.com, “The Ring back tone service, widely known as *COLORing^TM, was first launched in May, 2002 by SK Telecom. The service resulted in tremendous success with over 6.5 million customers of SKT currently enjoying this service. To further popularize the service,WiderThan.com has done a lot of pioneering work to diversify its RBT solution worldwide. In this regard we are happy to partner with a leader like AirTel and launch the IN based service for the first time in India.”