Mobile phone users customize their handsets to suit their personality from the moment it is purchased. Whether it is the color (skin) of the phone, ring tones, logos, screensavers or special animation, the handsets has now become an extension of the user's personality.

The next evolution in handset personalization, color ring-back tones (CRBT), allows for users to customize what the calling party hears or sees with video, music, promotional sound clips or voices. Instead of the familiar ring-tone, a particular video clip, music, message or other personalized audio content is heard or seen by the calling party while they wait for the call to be answered.

The APEX Audio/Video Color Ring-Back Tones (CRBT) application, based on the industry leading OmniVox3D Application Server, offers a number of key benefits to service providers. The support for audio and video ring-back on the same platform allows service providers to reach both 2G and 3G customers at a lower cost-per-user. The time to design, develop and deliver CRBT services, and then to continue modifying it to meet ever-changing user demands, is radically minimized with the integrated service creation environment.

By offering the latest applications, such as video CRBT, a service provider is perceived as being on the leading-edge, reducing customer churn while increasing loyalty. Since the application is independent of both handsets and Subscriber Identity Modules (SIMs), CRBT options are available to every type of subscriber (i.e. postpaid, prepaid, fixed line or mobile).

With the APEX Audio/Video CRBT application, users can personalize their communications with a variety of multimedia content and assign different CRBTs to different callers or groups of callers, and select different CRBT for their callers based on date, day or time. They can receive SMS notifications for new audio and video content availability and access the service through IVR, Web, SMS and Interactive Video Portal (IVP) interfaces.