You can find a lot of writings about ringtones, the ringtone history and stories about the famous Nokia Tune. Here´s the history of the Nokia Tune.
It all started in the year 1993 and with the launch of Nokia's 2100 series. The new Nokia 2100 phones were more advanced than previous Nokia's and had more than 20 pre installed ringtones. Anssi Vanjoki (today Nokia's Executive Vice President and General Manager of Multimedia) suggested that one of the pre installed ringtones could be Nokia's own ringtone. His proposal for the so called Nokia tune was Francisco Tárrega's (1852-1909) "Gran Vals". The Gran Vals was also at that time used on Nokia TV-commercials.
Anssi Vanjoki gave the notes of the Gran Vals to Lauri Kivinen (Corporate Communications) and tried to sell the idea of a Nokia Tune to him. At first Kivinen thought it quite unnessecary for a phone to have several ringtones. Hadn´t people been doing just fine with one ringtone? Despite skepticism things were developed furher in Oulu, Finland, where Nokia ringtones were developed.
In 1994, the Nokia 2100 series phones were launched and the Nokia tune could bee heard all over the world. The Nokia 2100 series was a success story, planning to sell 400 000, but sold 20 million!
Nowadays when people use mp3 ringtones it can be hard to find traditional monophonic ringtones to download. Get ringtones offers all sort of ringtones and have a huge library of content, but not even they have the historical Nokia Tune available for download. If you live in Finland you can download ringtones from Soittoäänet.