WhatsApp Announces Its Getting Into Voice Services

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I would imagine the traditional phone messaging services will be more than a little concerned about this as their business model is becoming more and more under threat, not just from Whatsapp.

Today Jan Koum, the CEO of WhatsApp — acquired by Facebook last week for $19 billion — delivered another news bomb on top of last week’s milestone: he announced that the messaging giant is finally moving into voice — a move announced at MWC, the conference for mobile carriers that apps like WhatsApp are squarely disrupting.WhatsApp Announces Its Getting Into Voice Services [techcrunch.com]

Facebook to Acquire WhatsApp [webmasterworld.com]

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When Rakuten bought Viber [webmasterworld.com] they had 300 million voice users.

I'm not sure the telecoms are as concerned with this. You generally need a really strong LTE signal or WiFi to use these sorts of apps. And either way they're going to try to charge you for data somehow.