OnMobile intros Reverse Ring Back Tones

BANGALORE,INDIA:OnMobile Global Limited, India’s largest and only listed player in the telecom value-added services (VAS) space, has introduced Reverse RBT, a first-of-its-kind VAS application through which subscribers can hear the caller tunes that they set for themselves, rather than the traditional ringing tone or a song set by the called party.

Reverse RBT was recently launched by Tata Docomo under the “My Song” brand name.

The hugely popular ring back tones (RBT), when introduced, offered users a chance to set a tune for all their callers to hear. However, the caller did not have a choice in the song that was played. Consumer research also indicates that approximately 23 per cent of all callers don’t set RBT since they don’t want to pay for something they don’t get to hear.

OnMobile launched Reverse RBT to address this market requirement. With Reverse RBT, users can now listen to tones of their choice – from international and Indian songs to news and jokes – while waiting for their call to be answered.

Arvind Rao, cofounder, CEO and Managing Director of OnMobile, said, “Reverse RBT offers consumers the freedom to listen to caller tunes of their choice, for the first time in India. This taps into the desire of Indian consumers for greater control and freedom over the content they consume, using handsets of their choice.”

Reverse RBT is one of several OnMobile innovations in RBT, one of the most popular value-added services available today. In fact, over 250 million songs were downloaded from OnMobile’s RBT platform in 2009, increasing at a blistering rate of 55 per cent year-on-year. This is especially significant in the context of sharply dropping ARPUs for operators.

Not resting on this success, OnMobile continues to offer new features and services that add value to RBT subscribers in India. OnMobile handles 34 million music search requests from 6.3 million unique users every month, with a song downloaded every eight seconds. Till date, OnMobile’s RBT is present across six countries, 12 deployments and 53 languages.

Reverse RBT is one of several initiatives by OnMobile to address the Indian consumers’ desire to get more out of their mobile phones – from utility service, m-commerce and social networking to entertainment. In fact, experts predict that the mobile value-added services market India will be a USD1 billion industry by 2010. RBT is the biggest segment in this market, contributing to about 30 per cent of VAS revenues in India.

Reverse RBT can currently be accessed by all Tata DOCOMO subscribers in India.