Why is there a tone when you call someone, before they answer the phone?
In: Technology
not entirely sure which tone you mean but generally you basically get a confirmation that the connection is being handled
If you hear the tone right after each ring, it usually means the person you are calling is on another phone call at that moment.
You know how your smartphone plays a song when somebody calls you? And you can set up a “ringtone” in your smartphone to change that song to anything you like, so you can have it be a favorite / annoying / funny song?
Your smartphone can do this because it’s a computer with a speaker, so when you have a call, it can play any audio file in the computer’s storage.
In contrast, [here is a video of an old-school early 1980’s landline phone ringing](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u52UUO6vN-E&t=122s). As the guy in the video explains, it doesn’t have a speaker (and it certainly doesn’t have a computer). That ringing sound is being produced by a bell being hit with a hammer.
Back when this kind of phone was in use, you’d have heard the tones you’re asking about, because they were the tones that were “telling” the other person’s phone to ring the bell. If you dial 555-1234 and heard: tone, tone, tone, then the other person said “Hello?” you’d know that their phone rang three times — meaning it *literally rang the actual physical bell* three times. The tones you heard were the signals that were *causing* the bell to ring.
Sometime in the last 30-ish years they changed this part of the phone system. Nowadays, the tones are played by a phone system computer to tell the caller that the connection has been made and the system is waiting for the other person to answer the call.
The tones it plays for you don’t correspond anymore to physical rings. Of course, if you’re calling a cellphone, it doesn’t even *have* a concept of “ringing three times”, it just plays the song until the person answers the call or a certain number of seconds have passed.
But even if you’re calling your friend Bob, who has an early 1980’s style phone plugged into a landline, the phone system doesn’t bother anymore to “sync up” the tones the phone system computer plays for you with the signal the phone system sends to tell Bob’s phone to ring the bell.
So you can hear tone, tone, tone, “Hello?” And then say “Hey Bob, why’d it take three rings for you to answer? Were you taking a bath or something?” And Bob might say “What are you talking about? My phone only rang twice.”
(Yes, you can still buy landline telephone service, connect one of those old phones to the wall, and make / receive calls.)
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