Whatsapp and what’s next for providers?

Whatsapp, Facebook Viber and Skype and other social media applications that support messaging continue to erode voice revenue for telecom providers as a result of cost differences between these Over the Top (OTT) competitors and telecom providers.

Whilst traditional messaging services revenue is under threat from OTT offerings Short Messaging Services (SMS) still dominates the market with growth coming from the A2P (Application to person) market as it provides a cost-effective channel for engaging customers. Locally the increase in the adoption of smartphones is further leading to growing usage of mobile messaging services. Smartphones will account for 19% (4.6 billion) of all networked devices by 2019. One local operator has attempted to address the situation by blocking certain OTT apps. But there is hope for operators as they move customers to 4G, where Voice Over LTE (VoLTE) promises greater efficiency and enables providers to offer voice almost like an application. So let's see who will be first to market in TNT.

Note an advisory posted on the 19^th October 2015 notes that millions of Android devices are at risk because they lack the "appropriate permissions model" for LTE networks. A remote attacker on the provider's network may be able to establish peer-to-peer connections to directly retrieve data from other phones, or spoof phone numbers when making calls," the advisory warned. "A malicious mobile app for Android may be able to silently place phone calls without the user's knowledge." Not only that, by exploiting the way that Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) works, the researchers found that they could obtain free bandwidth from carriers without incurring additional charges.