WhatsApp is popular in the Middle East. Several countries there ban VOIP as it cuts their (very expensive) international call revenue and is harder to tap
What's up with that WhatsApp $19bn price tag? Answer: Voice calls
Multibillion-dollar chat app WhatsApp will let users make voice calls, it was announced today. Its makers said that in the second quarter of 2014 it would begin rolling out support for voice comms for iOS and Android devices with Windows Phone and BlackBerry support planned for a later date. Announcing the new service at a …
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Tuesday 25th February 2014 08:26 GMT Anonymous Coward
VoIP is actually easy to tap unless it's in a secure tunnel, but this places WhatsApp even in a better position to create a global data tap on everyone. It's a bigger data goldmine for the US than FB is.
First off, it copies your entire address book, so as long as you communicate with ANYONE who has your phone number, your own number is now known.
Secondly, there's SMS marketing as a massive problem waiting to happen.
If that starts, you will have nowhere to hide as you cannot switch it off, and remember, politicians think that opt-OUT is a sensible restriction, leaving you with a whack-a-mole problem. The only thing stopping this from happening right now is costs. This is, incidentally, as far as I can see ther REAL reason behind the frantic "give us your mobile number" attempts to "make your account more secure" prompts by FP and Google - they want to be in the front line when this starts happening.
Thirdly, there is SMS intercept. Your SMS traffic is moderately protected by your telco so it needs a warrant to be collected, and it gets more complicated on a global scale. WhatsApp has been absolutely brilliant for US intelligence by moving all such traffic to an easy-to access server park in the US which gives them trending (so-called "atmospherics") as well as meta data and contents without any need for pesky foreign collaboration.
And now, voice intercepts. First of all, if the Middle East countries want to bar it it's not hard to do, WhatsApp does zero traffic cloaking so it's a matter of setting up a couple of decent filters. However, WhatsApp does not protect its traffic (FYI, most VoIP apps don't bother - ask Viber) so tapping it will be easy. If not, ban. Thirdly, exporting meta data to the US will be all automatic.
And all eyes are on the NSA ...
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Tuesday 25th February 2014 01:41 GMT R 11
Great. Expect random fluctuation in latency
It's pretty easy to make voip work really poorly on a given network. Random fluctuations in latency are almost impossible to work around. A little bit of congestion and your call becomes useless. I don't see networks who have already lost so much revenue from text messaging handing their voice revenue over too.
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Tuesday 25th February 2014 11:41 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Great. Expect random fluctuation in latency
That's why QoS exists.... but a simple app can't control it, it's up to the network provider. IMHO it does make sense to pay a little more for prioritezed packets - but sometimes you can cope with latency and other issues if your calls don't need a very high quality, and all you need is a cheap call.
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Tuesday 25th February 2014 03:33 GMT NullReference Exception
Re: I think that we may see the mother of all cage fights in the US market.
Except that most U.S. carriers now include unlimited talk & text in their plans but have data quotas with overage charges. (A few years ago it was the other way around.) So, at least as far as domestic usage is concerned, the "problem" may solve itself. International calls are a different matter.
On the other hand, on 4G/LTE networks, "voice calls" are internally implemented as VoIP. Could get interesting...
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Tuesday 25th February 2014 13:03 GMT Don Jefe
Re: I think that we may see the mother of all cage fights in the US market.
@Arctic Fox
You are absolutely correct. Telecoms in the US is probably the most (what's a synonym for corrupt that doesn't imply criminality?) industry in the US. Huge tax dollars go into secondary subsidies of the telco industry and everything is fairly well balanced between the government and the network operators. They won't allow that balance to be upset.
There are a few industries here that nobody messes with and telecoms is one of them. You can't play there if you don't have the clout to steer national policy. Facebook does not have what it takes to do that.
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Tuesday 25th February 2014 02:52 GMT Anonymous Coward
I wonder how well this service is going to work with data roaming
I for example have problems getting mobile internet or email if I am roaming. I can get text messages and of course phone. Part of the attraction of WhatsApp voice would be to replace roaming phone calls with VOIP calls through WhatsApp.
And I agree with what Arctic Fox said above about U.S. mobile carriers fighting this tooth and nail--have an upvote!
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Tuesday 25th February 2014 11:56 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: I wonder how well this service is going to work with data roaming
When you're abroad you can take advantage of free or cheap wifi to use such a services, I routinely use hotel or offices wifi to place calls via Skype when I'm abroad, especially when I'm in countries leading to crazy roaming fees (Vodafone asks me 3€/min to call from/to some countries).
Otherwise if you travel often enough to a give country you can get a local SIM with a data plan which is usually far cheaper than roaming calls or data. The greed of some telcos is killing their revenues from roaming, because they ask so much money people are getting smarter and find cheaper ways to call/message.
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Tuesday 25th February 2014 04:04 GMT Daniel Voyce
I would be much happier with Video calls
Surely video calling would be a logic step after this? The market is pretty much dominated by either Facetime (iOS only) or Skype, if it is true that they are planning on creating a desktop application this might actually be the first platform that could challenge Skype and to be honest I would embrace it if they created a Linux client for it as the state of Skype on Linux at the mo is questionable at best!
However if this means I can sack off Viber then it gets a Thumbs Up from me!
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Tuesday 25th February 2014 11:09 GMT Dave 126
Re: I would be much happier with Video calls
>Ask yourself why Skype is very little interested in a Linux client... do you believe FB/Whatspp would be more interested?
Er, because a) Skype is owned by MS, who make money from Windows, a competitor to Windows, and b) Linux doesn't enjoy the desktop market share either of WinXYZ or OSX, according to any of the fuzzy metrics available. As far as I know, a Facebook video chat session could be implemented in an HTML 5 browser.
What'sApp doesn't have a desktop client for any platform AFAIK... though might it work on an Android emulator on a laptop with a SIM? I dunno.
(I may be wrong, i haven't played with Linux for a while)
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Tuesday 25th February 2014 11:46 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: I would be much happier with Video calls
It's interest was little even before it was acquired by MS - and it does support iOS and Android which are MS competitors in the mobile space. From many perspective MS should be interested to bring as many people as it could to Skype, because these kind of services are more useful as more users you can reach with it. Yet I would like to know how many users buy Skype premium services on different platforms. Maybe if Linux users are very little willingly to buy them compared to other users, there's very little incentive to support an OS with very little desktop share (servers don't call with Skype...) and whose users don't spend on Skype.
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Tuesday 25th February 2014 14:04 GMT Don Jefe
Re: I would be much happier with Video calls
Skype never showed much interest in Linux and it has nothing to do with ownership by MS. Skype was a huge mistake that never should have happened. Ever. Nobody considered a Linux port because as soon as they touched Skype all their attention turned to how to get rid of it.
Skype is one of the funniest companies in all of the novelty IT sector. Everybody laughs at Skype and all the aborted attempts to turn it into an actual business. Every major company in the world has looked at buying Skype at least once and most everybody backs out quickly when they see there is no viable way to recover the insanely high purchase price.
It has been a joke for so long now it kind of wore itself out. It was such a big joke that the financial press services let people slide obviously false press releases in and get them blasted out to every CEO, Board, Investment Banks and Brokerage on the planet. Hell, Bloomberg ran a press release saying Commodore had purchased Skype as an announcement to the world the brand was reemerging, but this time as a hazardous waste disposal company. Financial news services don't have a sense of humor, thats SEC regulation.
Skype was also considered the easiest way to get rid of unwanted higher level staff: 'God, Johnson in Opps is such a dick. I would fire him in a millisecond if it wasn't for his severance package. Oh shit! Call finance, buy Skype and make Johnson EVP of VOIP or something. I want press releases rolling out tomorrow. No severance if he quits and those options go back in the pot! Genius. That is why I get paid the big bucks.'
The most money made having to do with anything Skype was by the legal and finance specialists you bring in for big deals and the companies that developed all the infrastructure level tech that telecom companies put in place to control voice service losses and maintain network control. Take a peek at the companies that put out the Skype specific lawful intercept and revenue leakage tech. Interestingly enough, they also provided much of the equipment in the Bush MkII era 'secret room' surveillance and the NSA programs we all know and love today. People have been listening in on Skype calls before Skype ever had its first logo updated.
There was never even a remote possibility of Skype making making money. Every time it has been purchased it has been by a desperate corporate leader who had run out of good ideas. Apotheker wanted to buy it as well, but he was successfully put out of our misery before he got a chance. The same will be true of WhatsApp. There is no other industry, not one, that's closer to governments than telecom (including defense).
Nobody is going to be allowed to interfere with that. Zuckerberg is about to get his first lesson in why you don't go sticking your dick in other people's pork barrel pie. Only stupid people and actual, real life, psychopaths get into telecom service offerings. There is no more punishing way to make money than as a telecom exec (even politicians have it better). Weapons systems and telecom are the only two industries our investment group won't even look at; ever. Take that shit somewhere else.
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Tuesday 25th February 2014 06:49 GMT Anonymous Coward
No, that's not an answer
Facebook already has a billion users, and they could add voice calling capability to their platform for a lot less than $19 billion.
I'll bet the real plan is that since a lot of these people are overseas and are not Facebook users, they'll force everyone using WhatsApp to login via Facebook. That way they'll greatly increase the claimed number of daily users in Facebook, and fool investors into thinking they're still growing.
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Tuesday 25th February 2014 07:41 GMT Charles Manning
Free, free, free...
That's what the pigs think too when the farmer brings their slops: Look at this great guy who brings us FOOD for FREE, no rooting and digging required. Just eat all this free food. How great life is! Then next day the truck comes loads the pigs and takes them for slaughter.
Here's the hint people. When you get free stuff on the interwebs, you're being farmed. Little Zuckerboy is in out back doing deals with the data and eyeball buyers to get a good price for his bitches and their data.
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Tuesday 25th February 2014 10:24 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Free, free, free...
"Look at this great guy who brings us FOOD for FREE, no rooting and digging required"
Never mind FB, there's The Company That Must Not Be Named busy owning search and mobile through the same strategy.
Curiously, that most successful of pig swill providers has no worthwhile offering in the VOIP space (no, I don't count Google Voice), which means that Facebook have made a $19bn bet on making money from VOIP, even after Microsoft wasted $8.5bn on Skype, for a product that simply makes no money, and has no real appeal to their corporate users.
VOIP: An event horizon for investor's cash.
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Tuesday 25th February 2014 15:39 GMT theblackhand
Re: Free, free, free...
MS buying Skype was about providing a reason for enterprises to move away from their costly PBX's onto Lync (why just have voice when you can have IM/voice/video). MS aren't silly enough to directly attack the telco's at this point. Maybe in the future but they are playing very nicely at present.
Google seems happy to have client devices that send all the data back to the cloud and leave the voice/data side to the telco's. Again, playing nicely.
I'm not entirely sure there is a lot of money to be had in voice - the telco's know how to squeeze out new player's in markets. I suspect Facebook would be looking at the markets that haven't been deregulated to make money. Sure voice over consumer Internet may not be great but if it only costs a Facebook account then who cares about the quality.
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Tuesday 25th February 2014 11:13 GMT Jim 59
Re: Free, free, free...
Well said re the farm.
I don't get the Whatsapp business model anyway. It seems to depend upon small details in peoples' phone contracts. Eg. like many people, I get free unlimited texts with my package, so Whatsapp is no use to me. Other packages give say 5000 texts a month, again no scope for Whatsapp. Even where there is a benefit, Whatsapp simply moves the cost from your SMS allowance to your data allowance.
What I am trying to say is any provider can knockout Whatsapp with a few small contract adjustments. And making small contract adjustments is what the networks are good at. Seems to be a non-business.
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Tuesday 25th February 2014 17:13 GMT Pseudonymous Coward
Re: Free, free, free...
> I don't get the Whatsapp business model anyway. It seems to depend upon small details in peoples' phone contracts. Eg. like many people, I get free unlimited texts with my package
What I liked about Whatsapp vs SMS was that it's free across borders while international SMS still do cost money, the group chats came in handy every now and again and you can send pictures (better/cheaper than MMS) and sounds, all for the cost of 99 cents per year.
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Tuesday 25th February 2014 09:26 GMT Anonymous Coward
Skype is doing thef for ages... what's new?
So we have another Skype clone, which was probably the clone of something else... what's new in another "walled garden" application which lets you calling people who use it only? At least with Skype I can call plain phones abroad at a decent price (compared to the crazy price, up to 3€/min of telcos here), without asking them to install Skype, if they don't (or can't) use it. Is another Skype app for mobile worth $19bn??
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Tuesday 25th February 2014 10:42 GMT Charlie Clark
Re: Skype is doing thef for ages... what's new?
Technologically the WhatsApp deal is not interesting. Skype's been out there for a while, I find the voice / video in Google Hangout's very good, which has the added "bonus" of already working with WebRTC, and there are now even open source solutions out there. However, scaling VOIP up and providing a reliable service for hundreds of millions isn't for the faint-hearted. As many have pointed out: the networks can easily play nastily unless the get cut in.
The money isn't real money - it's mainly a stock deal albeit plus a handsome pay-off for the VCs. Not sure if any of them are on Facebook's board. If so there might be a conflict of interest, except you can't have one for a private company so it would be down to shareholders getting off their butts and taking action (not going to happen as presumably the big ones are in on the pay-off).
No, the deal for Facebook was always about closing down the competition: there shall be one social network and Facebook is its name. Here, money doesn't matter and costs are usually offset against tax anyway (investors will accept lower profits in exchange for higher shareprices because of the favourable treatment of capital gains) and the long term expectation that market domination will lead to monetisation. Personally, I think Rakuten's valuation of Viber was probably close to the money.
Microsoft still thinks it's going to make money from Skype/Lync in the corporate world. One of my clients is big on Microsoft but they're currently rolling out Cisco kit which links into Lync and BBM still dominates the messaging space. But, who knows? Maybe corporates will get worried about the future of BlackBerry and turn to Microsoft.
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Tuesday 25th February 2014 13:06 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Skype is doing thef for ages... what's new?
"already working with WebRTC"
Frankly I can't understand this mania to multiplex everything over HTTP and create a TCP/IP-like layer over HTTP that already runs over TCP/IP. It's Google pushing hard this way, and shows how stupid are Google engineers in their attempts to gather as many data as they could - while creating a lot of useles protocols that just introduce more overhead in processing them (and more headaches to sysadmin trying to unterstand what's running over their networks and stop unwanted applications) . Yes, I know the reason, bypass firewall/proxies/etc. Just we already have designed and built firewall/proxies to inspect and block all their stupid "TCP/IP over HTTP" protocols...
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Tuesday 25th February 2014 09:31 GMT Ian Watkinson
Unlimited Calls Cheap, Unlimited Text Cheap - Unlimited Data..not so
It's difficult to find a deal that doesn't offer unlimited voice calls, most also offer unlimited or a huge amount of texts, the same don't offer unlimited data.
Going from 1Gb to 4Gb normally costs you £5-£10 a month.
So why would I want to use more data to replace voice/text?
Only for international use, which whatsapp works for. But then again, so does viber/kik/skype/hangouts and a myriad of others.
Don't think this is much of a step forward.
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Tuesday 25th February 2014 11:12 GMT Saul Dobney
I get confused here. Why is VOIP with Whatsapp any different from Skype or other VOIP? Don't telcos already ban or curtail this type of traffic? And telcos already know who you call, where from etc. so why is Whatsapp different? Isn't there a risk that adding voice brings in other regulatory bodies who might spoil the party?
Wouldn't the main reason be to get at better location-based advertising? Users will have their phone on and will be receiving chats. So Facebook tracks the location and sends localised ads/offers/coupons via chat based on location, demographics or other profile information that it has. The coupon is scanned off the phone at the till (or payment by phone) and then 'liked' to friends in the vicinity.
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Tuesday 25th February 2014 11:26 GMT Robert E A Harvey
who are all these users
Twit.tv says that Whatsapp is big in Europe because it is cheaper than cross-border texting. You say that it's big in the orient ditto ditto. I'm an international service engineer, I go to dozens of countries and meet hundreds of people. I've never met a whatsapp customer asking if I am one too. Never.
Who are all these gazillions of users?
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Tuesday 25th February 2014 12:27 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: who are all these users
You are hanging with the wrong people, and you are probably lucky. I know (for example) most of my friends who are blue collar use WhatsApp, a smattering of professionals (read clerks) and a couple of serious professionals - you know, psychiatrists and the like - but they're mostly just trying to be cool.
It's the blind leading the blind with a few rich cool kids trying to keep up with what the other so-called cool kids are doing.
I wouldn't touch it with a stick personally, and I feel I'm missing nothing.
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Tuesday 25th February 2014 11:38 GMT Anonymous Coward
the reason spain uses WhatsApp and not viber for text is bacause spanish Operators block viop apps like viber. WhatsApp got big because it didnt have voice. id laugh if Telefonica and Vodafone block WhatsApp and kill it. if they dont they'll have to open viber too. if they do neither we can presume so pockets got lined to give WhatsApp viop rights and viber have a good case in the courts.
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Tuesday 25th February 2014 13:25 GMT Joel 1
Actually my family's main use of WhatsApp is sending videos/pictures around instead of MMS - too many networks charge extra for these, when it should really just come out of the data bundle. But it's only marginal - slightly easier than emailing them, or sharing with dropbox.
Advantage over Skype is that I can send the picture when convenient to me, and it is received at the other end when convenient for them. With Skype, it wants to have a real time confirmation to send/receive the picture.
Looking at Telegram now to replace WhatsApp.
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Tuesday 25th February 2014 14:55 GMT Anonymous Coward
I see where this is going...(voice call via WhatsApp)...
Me: Hey Mom and Pop, happy marriage anniversary!
WhatsApp/FB: <Ting!!> Discount! Discount!! Discount!!! Pizza for grey heads celebrating anniversaries!
Mom&Pop: Thanks, Son!
WhatsApp/FB: <Ting!!> Discount! Discount!! Discount!!! Flowers for people celebrating...well whatever!
Me: So what are you plans?
WhatsApp/FB: <Ting!!> Discount! Discount!! Discount!!! Fly to Timbuktu to celebrate your anniversary!
Mom&Pop: Thanks for all those discounts son!
WhatsApp/FB: <Ting!!> Keep using WhatsApp Voice for more discounts!
Me: WTF???
Mom&Pop: Eh??
Me immediately hangup and uninstall WhatsApp! Mom&Pop struggle to even find hangup button, let alone uninstall option for WhatsApp!