Michal Ždanský Around the communication service WhatsApp has been since it bought Facebook for $16 billion, interesting things happen. The day before yesterday, the service experienced the largest outage in its history, which lasted over three hours. After all, CEO Jan Koum apologized for the outage and stated that a router error was to blame. Yesterday, Koum also announced 465 million active users, of which 330 million are expected to use the service daily.
At the Mobile World Congress 2014, WhatsApp has now come up with an interesting news, as it is preparing a voice call function for its service. It should appear in the application during this year, but the exact date of introduction has not been specified. Thanks to VoIP, WhatsApp could become an interesting competitor to Skype, Viber or Google Hangouts. After all, the call function is also offered by Facebook Messenger, however, it remained rather forgotten among users. Until now, WhatsApp only allowed sending audio recordings.
So far, the application has had a huge impact on the use of expensive SMS, and it would be nice if the same could be achieved in the case of voice calls. Unfortunately, at least here in the Czech Republic, the rise of VoIP is hindered by limited data tariffs, and it is not much better elsewhere in the world. It can be expected that, like the messaging service, it will be charged a low annual fee, or become part of an already existing subscription (€0,89/year). In the first case, voice calling could bring additional funds to WhatsApp, which has used only a minimum of investment money and has never shown any ads.
We hope that future updates will also bring improved design, this is definitely one area where the new owner, Facebook, could contribute to the service. At the very least, the iOS client would need the graphic designer's care like salt.
I'd rather have a link to OS X like viber has :)
Euro per year-NEVER!! WHAT DO I STEAL?
Sorry, but the data packages in CZ are terrible and behind at least 10 years. Comparison: o2.sk-> package per day 0.5e FUP 400MB, o2.cz-> package per day ~1.2ea FUP 30MB :D
It's quite difficult for me to understand the buzz around WhatsApp, but also other applications like Hangouts and the like.
1) I am in the Czech Republic, i.e. on the Internet or on the signal of my operator, so I can call and send messages, the few pennies are not worth it to me, and if so, I will buy an unlimited tariff.
2) I am abroad, on WiFi, there is nothing to solve, I can chat or call even without those applications.
3) I am abroad, on the signal of a local operator, but without data - and I am with all WhatsApp and so on. in the bag, again I can only call and send messages for money.
So explain to me why I should have x similar applications on my phone and solve which of my contacts uses which, who is on Skype, who is on Viber, who has WhatsApp, who Hangouts, …
Maybe good for those who need to solve every penny, but for those it is cheaper to grind elsewhere than around Apple products.
The Facetime Audio data stream is a maximum of 31 KB, which consumes 1,8 MB of data per minute. So if someone has a 150 MB package, they can use up to 82 minutes. That doesn't seem too small to me (if I take the price of CZK 100 for the data tariff). I think the data flow of the last VoIP services in Viber, Facebook Messenger will be similar.