WhatsApp, the popular (and cheap) messaging app, has added VoIP capability for voice calling — and has consequently been banned by telco provider Etisalat (News - Alert) in the United Arab Emirates.
WhatsApp, which was acquired by Facebook last year for $16 billion, claims more than a billion mobile downloads, more than 450 million active business and consumer users, and has more than a million users joining every day. That’s a huge customer base — and one that threatens the voice revenue for mobile operators.
As businesses increasingly embrace VoIP-based services, competition has flourished in the space, with several pure-play providers entering the game. It means that wireless companies, telcos and cable MSOs have a vested interest in either launching services of their own, adding third-party offerings as a value-add to their bundles or finding ways to prevent consumers from using such competing services.
In the U.S., the FCC (News - Alert) has reclassified broadband as a public utility so that it can enforce Net neutrality.
"Threats to Internet openness remain today," the FCC said in its order. "The record reflects that broadband providers hold all the tools necessary to deceive consumers, degrade content or disfavor the content that they don't like."
In the UAE, specifically in the case of Etisalat, a large percentage of its users use the app — circumventing the carrier’s voice toll services. And its response has simply been to disallow its users from using it.
Net neutrality (News - Alert) and competition are not often upheld in the UAE. For instance, in February, news broke that the region was banning over-the-top (OTT) VoIP services. Skype (News - Alert) confirmed that both its website and its services had been experiencing blocks. And, students at NYU’s Abu Dhabi campus reported that their ability to make computer-to-landline calls using Skype has been curtailed.
Daniel Hanratty, the support site lead at the NYUAD Campus Technology Center, told the university’s student newspaper in New York that, “There’s no definite time for how long [Skype] has been blocked,” and, “blocking has been happening on and off for a year or so now.”