09:45, Feb 15th 2007 by Tim Green at 3GSM, Barcelona.

It was never supposed to happen, but the ringback tone is going off-portal – courtesy of London based specialist Muzicall.

The beauty of ringbacks for operators is, it's said, that only they can sell them. They are network-centric. But over the last year, Muzicall has been approaching Europe’s operators with a simple proposal: let us take over the running of your ringback servers and sell access to them to direct-to-consumer companies. This way, the networks retain some control and revenue, but let the
specialists market a concept that has mostly flopped so far.

Its RBT.4.ALL service thus enables brands to sell ringbacks directly to subscribers across all networks and enable services on any device. The UK company has already signed up D2C giant iTouch as a development
partner to provide off-deck RBT services for the UK, Ireland, Belgium, Holland, Norway, Finland and Sweden. It’s talking to all the other big players in the off-portal space. It's also publicly confirmed Vodafone NL as a partner, with two more opcos to be confirmed in a month.

Richard Jackson, Muzicall’s business development director, said:

“Ringbacks have been so badly marketed in Europe. They are called different names by different operators and there’s been no budget available to simply sell the concept. As a result, consumers are confused. What we’re proposing is to let the experts do the selling – and do so across as many networks as possible.”

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Published by Mobile Entertainment Magazine.