Today, in the age of the telecom revolution, cell phones have become a common sight. With mobiles, come a lot of personalized services and features. One of the most popular features is downloadable and customized ringtones. Many cell phone users like to have a special ringtone not only to identify his own phone, but also to identify the caller even without looking at the number. Ringtones are very popular with high school and college aged kids, who lead the market in terms of ringtone downloads.

With the increase in the usage of monophonic and polyphonic ringtones, and with the ever-increasing demand for more ringtones, many portals and Web sites started to provide such tones online. Initially, most of the sites charged for the ringtones, or had a catch involved. But people wanted more and more for free, thus the concept of free downloadable ringtones was born.

Today, there are hundreds and thousands of sites providing all kinds of ringtones. This includes all types of songs, instrumentals, latest releases, dialogues, religious chants, ethnic songs and much more. Most of the free downloadable ringtones available today are in the WAV, MIDI or MP3 formats. If you download free video ringtones, they come in the very small packages of the .3GP format.

The ability to download totally free ringtones also depends on the capabilities of your phone. If you can connect it to your PC by data cable, bluetooth or infrared then there are a number of places you can get suitable files for ringtones from for free. With MP3s becoming a norm for ringtones, the possibilities have expanded further. However, it is important to be sure the site you download ringtones from is a secure site that you trust. Some sites are run by malicious coders who include spyware and viruses with the ringtones, which are two things nobody wants for free.