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Turkcell, Turkey’s largest mobile carrier, launches new ring back tone service
April 27, 2005;
Everybody wants a piece of a big pie named "ring tone business".

Turkcell, Turkey’s largest mobile carrier, launches new ring back tone service ÇalarkenDinlet based on the technology of the European Computer Telecoms Group

More than 24 million Turkcell mobile subscribers can now profit from this innovative ring back tone service

Turkey’s largest mobile carrier, now offers its new ring back tone service ÇalarkenDinlet to its more than 24 million mobile subscribers. Further strengthening its market presence across Europe, the European Computer Telecom Group (ECT), Europe’s market leader for intelligent value-added services in fixed-line and mobile networks, has implemented the complete ring back tone solution for Turkcell. The ECT Group won the contract – worth several million euros – following a highly competitive tender. With Turkcell, yet another member of the TeliaSonera Group is banking on ECT technology: In recent months, the ECT Group has implemented its ring back tone application for other members of the TeliaSonera Group, such as TeliaSonera Finland and Omnitel in Lithuania. “We have benefited from working with an experienced vendor on ring back tone who has a real off-the-shelf product and at the same time responds flexibly to customer needs,” said Ali Kesan, Turkcell’s Chief Marketing Officer.

With the ECT Ring Back Tone Application, mobile customers can choose various songs, jokes or other sounds played to the person who calls them, while they also hear the familiar ring back tone. The service works regardless of who calls.

Turkcell’s ÇalarkenDinlet is based on the ECT Ring Back Tone Application and includes all user interfaces (Internet, WAP, IVR and SMS). The service is available in Turkish and contains Turkish content. Turkcell is able to offer content from several content providers. The service is offered with a monthly subscription fee of 12 Kontür (0.72 euro), with each ring back tone priced between 12 (0.72 euro) and 16 Kontür (0.96 euro).

Turkcell uses a so-called distributed architecture, meaning the technology is effectively spread out all over Turkey. The leg management is performed via Turkcell’s Ericsson intelligent network. This architecture makes the ring back tone installation even more cost-effective while also ensuring an excellent realization of geographical redundancy.

“For all our customers, the ECT Ring Back Tone Application has emerged as a major money-maker and I see a high potential for the service in the growing Turkish telecoms market. I’m looking forward to continuing our partnership with Turkcell and expanding our business in the region,” said Dr. Marshall E. Kavesh, CEO and cofounder of ECT.

The ECT Group offers an easily customisable and scalable solution for the ring back tone service, having realised several successful projects for major carriers across Europe, including Vodafone D2 in Germany, Tele2 in Sweden and throughout Europe, TeliaSonera in Finland and Omnitel in Lithuania. The solution includes network interfaces to the respective carrier’s post-paid and prepaid billing and provisioning system, a statistics package, as well as a content provider interface.

The ECT Ring Back Tone Application allows operators to market the service together with one or several content providers, who with their own-branded web portals serve as indirect sales channels and contribute to the commercial success of the new service. The mobile subscriber can set the ring back tones based on the person calling as well as the time of day and date. Mobile subscribers can buy and configure their personalised ring back tones over a wide variety of user interfaces, including the Internet, WAP, IVR, and SMS.

Background information on the ECT Ring Back Tone Application

The traditional ring back tone is the tone heard by someone who calls your telephone number. The ECT Ring Back Tone Application allows mobile subscribers to replace this standard tone with a personalised sound file. The mobile subscriber can assign different ring back tones to different callers or group of callers, even dependent upon the date, weekday and/or time. The personalised ring back tone can be a pop song purchased over a portal, a message recorded by the subscriber, a corporate advertisement, a joke, etc.

User Interfaces for your Mobile Subscribers: Each implementation of the ECT Ring Back Tone Application generally includes four customised user interfaces for the administration of the service by the mobile subscriber: Telephone interface via interactive voice response (IVR), a web portal, a WAP portal and an SMS interface.

Interfaces to Content Providers: The customised web portal provided by ECT offers content providers an open data interface for the uploading of ring back tones, definition of ring back tone group, pricing of ring back tones, downloading of event tickets and statistics, etc. You can make this interface available to external providers also delivering content or reserve this interface for your internal use.

There are three different architectures to realise this service: The AutoCarrier Softswitch in a central or a de-central service node architecture with tromboning, without tromboning using the call drop back feature in the Mobile-Switching-Center (MSC) or in an Intelligent Network Architecture with the INtellECT Service Control Point and AutoCarrier Communications Servers as Intelligent Peripherals.

The complete solution of the ECT Group contains the following components:

Customised AutoCarrier Data Warehousing and Separate File Server, e.g. for library of ring back tones, subscriber data, transaction-based records, call data records, statistics, etc.
Customised interfaces from the AutoCarrier Data Warehousing to your Customer Care System and billing databases as well as to content providers.
Customised user interfaces and front ends for the administration and usage of the system by the subscriber, e.g. SMS, interactive voice response (IVR), WAP, GPRS PDA, mobile handset JAVA applets and web interfaces.

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