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Telus Has a Bogus Ringtones Policy

(Should that be ‘ringtones’ or ‘ringtone’? Never mind.)

Kirsten (whose blog I think of each evening as I watch the crows fly east) has been corresponding with the easy targets at Telus about the non transferability of their ringtones:

If I buy a ringtone from Telus, it would cost me as much as $2 or $3 for an extremely short sound file – maybe a sound effect, 4 seconds long, or a beepy polyphonic version of a song. I can only ever play it on this phone, which’ll be outdated in a year or so. If I buy a new phone FROM TELUS, replacing the old one – and maybe renewing my contract in the process – you would still expect me to pay ANOTHER $2 or $3 for the privilege of downloading and reinstalling the same ringtone I ALREADY PAID FOR?

This is not a good deal.

I won’t be suckered into it again.

Amen. Mind you, the ringtone landscape is changing pretty quickly, so it’s possible that in two years the standard ringtone will actually be some 3-D hologram popping out of your purse or pocket, but that’s beside the point. DRM is generally shite, and this policy is an insanely strict (and therefore stupid) example.

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Darren Barefoot is an author, speaker and digital strategist. He’s the co-founder of Capulet Communications, and co-author of “Friends With Benefits: A Social Media Marketing Handbook”.

18 comments

  1. This isn’t strictly DRM, I don’t think. Telus has simply disabled their phones’ ability to import third-party ringtones, and I don’t know of any phones that can export them. And they don’t permit re-downloading of previously purchased tones. I don’t think the ringtone files themselves are locked in any pure-DRM way.

    What it is, is a sucky policy indeed. But I never buy ringtones because they are such a terrible value. I’m reminded of former U.S. FCC chairman Michael Powell (son of Colin) said:

    “My son says 99 cent songs on iTunes suck! He thinks music should be free. But his ringtone bill last month was $40!”

    Kids today, I tell you.

  2. I’ve got a Motorola Razr with Fido. I haven’t even investigated how much ringtones cost, as the Razr comes with bluetooth. Whenever I feel like getting a new ringtone, I grab the mp3 from my collection, edit it to be whatever length I want, then transfer it over via bluetooth. In about 5 minutes, I have a free, mp3 quality ringtone 🙂

  3. I wish I could do what Chris is describing, but my Bell Mobility Razr is locked up eight ways from Sunday. In theory it can play MP3 ringtones, but Bell has disabled any file upload/download capabilities, so the only way to get ringtones is by either buying them from Bell or buying Motorola’s Phone Tools software for $60 (and it’s not available for Mac, to boot). It sucks, especially since I chose the Razr in large part because of its MP3 ringtone capability.

  4. Hrm. My gut says that soon the technology will evolve, and the backend platforms will be able to “decipher” you on the network, and play what ever ring tones are associated with your profile. It’s all about IMS, and building identity into the platforms. It’s coming. Imagine how cool it would be, if the smarts were in the network, and not necessarily on the phone?

    -jules

  5. Consumer education will help as well. When I went to get a new phone, I specifically asked the Fido rep if the phone was locked down in any way. When consumers realize that DRM and other “enhanced features” are actually just taking rights away, stuff like this may start to disappear.

  6. The question on my mind is whether the Telus policy is any different from their competitors on ringtone DRM. Are Rogers and Bell sticking to a policy that the ringtone license applies to only one phone too? These companies look to their competitors to determine what they can get away with on DRM etc. While it looks to the consumer like Apple’s MP3s are the same thing (with fewer restrictions and for a cheaper price) it’s not the same from a business perspective, at least as long as we’re unable to get ringtones from other sources than the carriers.

  7. I have a Treo 650 (Bell Mobility) and I just use saved MP3 files for my ringtones. I have no limit to flexibility. (can attach different songs to different callers, etc.)

  8. I paid $4 for the first 8 notes of Every Breath You Take – 50 cents a freaking note.

    My other issue with their ringtones is that they’re misleading. When you demo them many have space after the ringtone so it sounds like they ring every few seconds when i real life that extra space doesn’t count and your ringtone ends up going off a dozen times before you can answer your phone.

    God I can’t wait for my telus plan to end.

  12. I know how you guys feel…I’ve been reading all the reviews on the KRZR K1, since my contract with Telus was up and they were giving me the phone for $50 on a 3yr contract. So I looked up the phone’s features: bluetooth, MP3, XM radio, Child Find/GPS…whatever. So when I get the phone, I download Phone Tools and saw that there were “make your own ringtones” options, but it was disabled. I asked a Telus rep what’s up with that…He replied that it was a song copy-right issue. They crippled my phone and I’m not getting my full money’s worth on its capabilities. I’ve been trying to hack/de-program my phone (ie. with BitPim, P2K, MSU), but it’s kind of confusing. I’ve even tried to reach around the situation by registering onto one of those ‘make your own ringtones and we’ll SMS it to you, so it’s like a download’ sites (ie. Phonezoo.com and Mobile17.com), but Telus disabled that too. Telus has to evolve if it wants to keep up with Rogers, Sprint, and Fido, who do allow “uncrippled” phones. Lesson learned: when I finish my contract, I’m just going to buy a phone from Asia and put it on a pay as you go or on a Roger’s plan.

  13. Jo Says:
    August 5th, 2007 at 4:35 am
    The protection is easy to bypass.

    this is from post #11

    Jo exactly do you mean?? and can you tell me how to do it??

  14. i can get mp3 ringtones into my phone quite easily, but it won’t play them because they are not DRM crippled (a process which itself violates the spirit, if not the letter, of copyrigh law). Telus sucks the proverbial pouch, and i would never reccomend them on any level. I will never renew with them, and i warn anyone who wants reasonable features to Stay Away.

  15. Hi. I too am with Telus and would like to assign one of the mp3’s I’ve already paid to download on my computer as a ring tone. Any help would be great. I have a Chocolate flip (I think it’s the 8500).
    Jo Says:
    August 5th, 2007 at 4:35 am
    The protection is easy to bypass

  16. I found this on a forum, and it works great!

    Go to rumkin.com and click on ‘Sprint PCS Vision Uploader.’.

    In the Ringers, Wallpapers section, enter a description (name of the song) into the Description box and click on browse to find your file. Select the file. Ignore the Upload To box and click the Upload File button. After the file uploads, you will be given a number that you will need to write down.

    Now go to your phone.

    Open your web browser. Go to the following address:

    rumkin.com/tools/sprint/jump.php

    You will get a box to enter the number you wrote down. Download the file. Click “install”. It will install in the ringtone folder.

    Now on your list of ringtones, you should see the filename you gave your saved file, minus the ‘.mp3’

    Select your ringtone!

  17. To use MP3 as ringtones on Motorola KRZR K1m with TELUS as the service provider, see:

    http://static.nucleardog.com/k1m.html

    Here is the instructions (in case the link goes down):

    Motorola KRZR K1m

    I got this phone and really hated the inability to disable the shutter sound and also wanted a way
    to put MP3 ringtones on it without buying them at ridiculous prices. The ringtone instructions have
    been tested on two phones on the Sasktel network and one phone with Telus, all worked.

    Setup

    * Install Motorola Phone Tools
    * Install P2k Commander (downloat at: http://s5vi.vxxxstuff.com/commander/)
    * Hook up your phone with the USB cable
    * Start up P2k Commander
    * In the right pane’s dropdown box (at the top) select “/a P2k Phone system” and click
    “Re-Read”

    MP3 Ringtones

    * First, cut up the MP3 you want to use as a ringtone down to a probably <30 second segment. Audacity is a good, free program for this.
    * Once you’ve got your file cut, export it to an MP3 with a descriptive name in My Documents.
    * In the right pane, navigate to “/a/motorola/shared/audio/”
    * Select your MP3 in the left pane and then right click on it and click “Copy”.
    * Navigate back up to “/a/”
    * Delete “MyToneDB.db” THIS WILL DISASSOCIATE ALL RINGTONES WITH ALL CONTACTS IF YOU HAVE THIS SET UP
    * Restart your phone
    * You can now select your MP3 as your ringtone!

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