Telstra Facebook caller tone app – who’s calling?
Filed under: apps, BigPond, consumer, entertainment, Facebook, gadgets and gizmos, innovation, lifestyle, music, social media, tones
Question: have you ever dialled a friend’s mobile phone and instead of hearing the standard ‘ring ring’ sound, you’re listening to the latest top 40 hit or old-school rock favourite?
So, what is this mysterious sound you ask? It’s called a caller tone and replaces the standard ringing sound that people hear when they call your phone, with music, comedy or sound effects.
Here at Telstra, we want to make it as easy as possible for our customers to enjoy fun mobile content, which is why we’re excited to launch our new Caller Tones Facebook application!
Created exclusively for Telstra mobile customers, this is the very first application that we have built specifically for Facebook. Making it easier than ever to purchase and manage your favourite caller tones, the application lets you:
- Browse and buy from a catalogue of around 10,000 caller tones
- Manage your Caller Tones account, including setting what tones play for certain people, days of the week, or times of the day
- See what caller tone(s) people are hearing when they call you
- Recommend tones to your friends
… all conveniently within Facebook on your PC or Mac.
The Telstra Facebook caller tone app can be found at, or just search for “BigPond Caller Tones” in the search box at the top of the Facebook page.
So, how much does it cost to maintain Caller Tones on your service?
For the first month, subscription is free for first-time subscribers, and from then on a $1.95 monthly fee applies unless you cancel your subscription. Each first-time customer gets to choose one free tone to start their collection and following this, additional Caller Tones cost $3.50 each (for those who like the details, check out the full Ts&Cs.
Plus over the coming weeks, we’ve got a handful of exclusive caller tones on offer via our new Facebook application. These exclusive tones will be updated each week, so make sure you keep an eye on the page!
Q. Are you already a Caller Tone fan and what type of tone is your preference?
Robert, I have to say caller tones drive me bonkers. I am going to show an age thingy however in general the demographic of this is type of application is for the youth of today. Therefore if I was to call a younger member in my community I am enforced to listen to their music.. GGGRRR. This technology has been around for some time & let me tell you, when I worked on an out bound dialler in collections I would hear the same caller tones over & over again. I am glad to read that there are now around 10,000 to choose from. Maybe the now people who work on the dialler may get variety.
I think it is an amazing feature. It’s interesting that I learnt it has been around for many years. I still find friends get baffled by how I have done it. I think it is a really good service, which self promotes the Telstra, further markets artists in an arena which produces income and most of all is just plain fun and exciting. Go Telstra!
I think this service provided by Telstra is just amazing. I never knew it has been around for many years, and from my experience nor did many of my friends. I still get people baffled at how I did it and how they can do it. Furthermore its a great tool that promotes artists, and produces another form of income for them in some sort of way. Great work Telstra! Its so simple, yet so fun and exciting
What an utter waste of money!
i agree with Larry & Mike
why would anyone want to pay for this when there’s so many free tones available in every format known to man on the web…or even make up your own ?
Personally, I absolutely detest them. They are way too loud, so loud I have to pull the phone away from my ear when they start up. I just avoid calling people with these obnoxious ring tones.
haha..have a lough…there are hundreds of ways to download coller tones for free, without your dodgy churges, $1:95 amonth is a enough for a cupa.
Thanks for your feedback Saba – it’s great to hear you’re as excited about the service as we are!
Appreciate your comments Larry and while Caller Tones isn’t for everyone, it’s proving to be a quite a popular and successful service. Caller Tones are proving particularly popular with people under 30 years old, but there’s also many that are older.
Keep the comments coming guys – this project has been my baby for a while now so really keen to hear what you all think!
Saba is excited looks like she made two posts within 2 minutes of each other!! Unless there are Two Saba’s “baffling”..
Reply to the Question:
Product is not for me, I’m out of the demograhic profile fit. But good on Telstra for providing something for the youth to bling their mobiles.
I think a lot of people get confused with ‘Caller tones’ and ‘Ring Tones’ Caller tones are what the ‘caller’ hears and ring tones are what the mobile makes to alert the called person. Caller tones are applied by the Telco. Ring tones are set by the phone user.
Just want to clear up a point of confusion. This Facebook app is for caller tones, not ringtones. Ringtones are downloaded to your phone, and then play on the phone when someone calls you. Caller Tones are kind of like the reverse, i.e. what you hear when you call someone, but before they pick up. BigPond Caller Tones are played by equipment within Telstra’s network.
All I have got to say is Caller tones have been around for over 5 years. 3 Mobile, Australia’s 1st 3G network launched this feature originally. Telstra claims to be a world leader but sometimes still has to follow others. Some like them, I don’t care really, sometimes they are loud, sometimes you have to listen to a song you hate, but mainly because I’m cheap, and don’t want to pay for something you never use. As the user and bill payer, you never hear them, why not reverse it, and when you call someone, you hear your favorite song instead of making other people that call you put up with your tastes in music????
I think its stupid, but if people want to line Telstra’s coffers for a stupid service they don’t get any benefit from then that’s their prerogative, but i think it should be free to opt out of hearing it.
There is only one person i know that uses this service, but i never call her anyway, so i’m safe.
I am quite suprised at some peoples response to this. To describe it as ‘stupid’, ‘waste of money’, ‘loud’ ‘annoying’ and for ‘abnoxious people’ is quite uneeded. If you want it use it, if you don’t, a simple ‘its not for me’ would be enough.
I know BigPond/Telstra have the details to outline what benefits it does bring to the company, financially and value-adding, hence the further investment in the new App itself. So kudos, for continuing this. We’re not changing the world, but we are making it more fun and customised and giving the option to make a chance from the same thing everyday.
Seriously, would you really stop calling someone because of the 10-15 second ringtone you need to listen to before they pick up? I hope not. Either way, do you turn the radio off when a song comes on, or switch channels on TV when in the same scenario? Get with the times, and be cool by getting a CallerTone, or by all means, don’t, but don’t stop others enjoying it.
And Yes, why not take it a step further and do as Jason suggested to offer the reverse aswell! Love it love it love it!
I’d even love to see HoldTones when on hold to Telstra, so you can listen to your choice of song, instead of the same plain music. =)
@Tone It Up
The problem is you don’t get a choice not to use it its forced on you that is some people problems with it.
And yes, if a song/ad/show i hate comes on TV/radio, i do switch or mute (doesn’t really work in a phone call though). I don’t stop calling anyone because of the feature, but if getting a Caller Tone means being cool, i’m quite happy being lame thank you very much.
The beef a lot of people have with it is that they/we don’t understand the point, sure, if you could upload your own caller tone (vetted of course for copyright/vulgarity) it could be useful for a business “Thank you for calling Blah … some quick marking spiel” and if calling after hours “Thank you for calling Blah, our business hours are between 9 and 5 monday to friday.” or even a marriage proposal. But a pointless song that is sometimes loud, that the person pays good money to have and never hears unless they call themselves, whats the point besides making yourself think your cool and shelling out more money on your already expensive phone plan, the extra $4 or so i think for me was much better spent upgrading 1gig to 3gig data on my iPhone plan.
Considered that caller tones was a great idea until I tried to download the song I wanted (November Rain) and ended up with something else and every attempt to correct it has failed including leaving messages on the site and discussing with Testra Business Direct and staff at a T-life shop. I didn’t think any thing could be so difficult or time consuming. Calling the help is hopeless – like wait for 20 minutes and then they drop you.
It is really nice for me to see you and your great hardwork again.Every piece of your work look excellent.Looking forward to learing more from you!
Just wondering why does Telstra cap the caller tone to 15??? I want to change them to suit my mood and when the latest songs come out but don’t necessarily want to delete the ones I already purchased. It seems like a silly thing to limit the number of caller tones we can have in our profile. That would be like facebook saying no you can only have 15 profile pics to choose from. I think it limits potential ARPU when can achieve as well.