Alert Ringtones

Before I continue, the spelling is MOSQUITO not MISQUITO! Believe it or not, many refer to it as a misquito ringtone. Across the popular search engines, there are over 100 daily searches on this incorrect spelling. There should be no excuses nowadays since Firefox has an inbuilt spell checker. Don’t ask me about the other web browsers because I don’t use them. Firefox rocks!

So what is all the fuss with these mosquito ringtones? Well for starters, it’s a way for kids to get around having to turn off their mobile’s in class. These high-frequency ringtones are only audible to youngsters, so teachers and adults over the age of 30 wont be able to hear them when your phone rings. The ability to hear high-frequency sounds drop as we get older, and this is the reason behind the popularity of mosquito ringtones. When we hit 30, the most we can hear is 15.8khz – an average of course. You just may be superman and have better hearing than most. If you go to our old front page (** sorry, link removed, as it’s way old and now deleted **), you can see a link to a sample mosquito ringtone.

My results are below. Find out which ringtones you can hear!

Only in the ringtone industry can promoters get away with using the word complimentary to NOT mean free. Below you will find the exact words pasted from a mobile phone carrier’s Compliance Policy for Partners & Affiliates. Unfortunately they wont allow me to disclose their name in this post.

1. Do not use the word “Free”
2. Do not use the terms “No Charge,” “No Cost,” “Bonus” or any other term to mean “Free.”
3. The only promotional term allowed for giving away Ringtones (or any other mobile content) is “complimentary”

Now I think this is very misleading to consumers when searching for ringtone offers. They will come across “complimentary” and most likely think they are getting something for free, when in fact they are being charged.

If you go to the online dictionary, you will see “complimentary” and “free” mean the same thing.

It seems the various ringtone providers are contradicting each other. Rockyourtones has the below rules:

The only approved synonym for “free” that can be used are COMPLIMENTARY and BONUS.

So here they have agreed that “free”, “complimentary” and “bonus” are synonyms – that is, meaning the same thing. You can see a sample ad below illustrating the confusion.