FREE CALLING VIA WHATS APP ANNOUNCED

Within a week after acquired by Facebook for a hell amount of money , WhatApp CEO  Jan Koum has announced at the ongoing MWC 2014 that voice calling support will be available in WhatsApp from Q2 2014 ! This is again a huge announcement from the world’s largest used messaging app . The WhatsApp voice calling support will be first available on Android and iOS, and then later on in Windows Phone and Blackberry OS. Like its text based IM service , the voice calling will also be free for some time and then minimal charges per year will be charged along with the text service . If the voice calling service will provide voice clarity and no delay in the voice calls then there is no doubt that like its IM service , WhatsApp voice calling too will be quite popular and will be instant hit this time , considering the already high popularity of the App . Watch out Indian mobile operators (Airtel/Vodafone/Rcom/..) , first you lost your SMS revenue and now comes the voice ! Anyway it is a good news for consumers .

Some of the WhatsApps competitors like Line, BBM , Skype , KakaoTalk, etc. already have voice calling support but their worldwide user-base is quite less in comparison to around 465 million users of WhatsApp , which has increased by an additional 15 million after its acquisition by Facebook (mostly because in some countries like US , many people might not even had heard about WhatsApp before its acquisition by Facebook and now it has become more popular) .

“I grew up in Russia, we had a telephone line, but a load of our neighbours didn’t. It became a shared resource for the whole apartment complex. People would come and knock on the door and ask to call their family in another city,” said Jan Koum at the MWC 2014 event in Spain .

“We’re adding voice to WhatsApp so people can stay in touch with friends and loved ones no matter where they are in the world. We use the least amount of bandwidth out there, and have optimised the hell out of it. We’ve made sure the quality is there, though, just like the messaging functions of WhatsApp,” said Koum.