THIS is probably the worst news for Zimbabwe’s mobile network operators and also too good to be true news for subscribers as WhatsApp’s co-founder and chief executive Mr Jan Koum delivered the time bomb at the recently held Mobile World Congress.
BY TECHNOMAG
“We’re going to introduce voice on WhatsApp in the second quarter of this year, We think we have the best voice product out there, we use the least amount of bandwidth and optimise the hell out of it,” the WhatsApp executive said.
This is absolutely bad news for Zimbabwean mobile network operators who are already reeling from the opportunity costs created by WhatsApp which literally hit the last nail in Multimedia Messaging (MMS) and heavily discouraged texting for smartphones in Zimbabwe.
The announcement by the chief executive if it’s anything to go by will prove the point I have always uttered that the future belongs to Internet Protocol no matter how much mobile operators have tried to fight or delay its implementation the writing is on the wall.
Currently, three operators in Zimbabwe led by Africom, ZOL and Powertel are already using or silently advancing into the Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), just the same technology which WhatsApp will be using to transfer VoIP, but its all about the compression technologies.
Skype pioneered the same concept with Viber trying to make the voice data packets much more compressed while WhatsApp has promised even much more compression and we eagerly watch the developments as they roll out.
For the general user, this will be too much of an early Christmas present to them around or before June 2014 if the announcement by the CEO is anything to go by.
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What has made this breaking news is the obvious popularity of WhatsApp, currently running on 465 million subscribers, the real prowess lies in its simple text-messaging service based on people’s mobile phone numbers but avoiding carriers’ common text-messaging charges.
With the way WhatsApp has grown so popular, I feel that even if it will still not deliver so much of voice data packets compression, it will still be popular and viable more than the current voice calls charges and few people will really complain about these compression ratios against the market competitors.
Viber is a cool alternative where one can actually call via the app, but its little popularity in Zimbabwe has made it a lame duck even against Skype on mobile version — an app I personally use quiet often even on the go.
WhatsApp already offers voice recording messaging, the ability to send recorded messages to friends as they instantly record back to respond.
The voice communications that Koum announced would mean a real time telephone call than voice mail recording exchange, and he was quiet bullish about its prospects.
“In order for WhatsApp to be successful, it really needs to be independent, There are no planned changes. We can only get our product to a billion or 2 billion users if we continue down the path we started on,” Koum said
“Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has tried to encourage its users to share more about themselves, but WhatsApp will continue with its own, very separate strategy.
“We as a company and product want to know as little as possible about our users. We don’t want to know your name or where you live, there are no plans to change that.”
The big question is can WhatsApp deliver a technology way better than what Skype or Viber has already offered the market? Was this really attainable or it was mere grandstanding during the Mobile World Congress.
Will this really be as big as WhatsApp has already promised or it will be another addition to our “Vapourware” list come 2015.
My question: Was Econet right in promoting Whatsapp bundles? Will they still promote the beast that has taken their lunch all the way to their dinner table? I doubt that so much.
Interesting and exciting times ahead as innovative solutions will now need to be unveiled sooner than later and finally I see all mobile operators being forced to start opening up on VoIP or sink.
The simple thing for our local players is to introduce their own independent app which can push VoIP traffic or bundles that are tailor made for VoIP to VoIP calls within or across network and start to catch on the craze now before WhatsApp.
l TechnoMag is Zimbabwe’s Premier Technology Magazine, more on www.technomag.co.zw or join us on our facebook page www.facebook.com/technomagzw, Email: [email protected] tweet @TechnoMagZw
