{"id":98072,"date":"2014-03-12T14:05:27","date_gmt":"2014-03-12T12:05:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=98072"},"modified":"2014-03-12T14:06:35","modified_gmt":"2014-03-12T12:06:35","slug":"whatsapp-good-for-us-vodacom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/cellular\/98072-whatsapp-good-for-us-vodacom.html","title":{"rendered":"WhatsApp good for us: Vodacom"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a title=\"Vodacom\" href=\"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/vb\/showthread.php\/227063-Vodacom\">Vodacom<\/a> shrugged off concerns that <a title=\"WhatsApp\" href=\"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/vb\/showthread.php\/501086-WhatsApp\">WhatsApp<\/a>\u2019s planned voice service would impact their voice revenues, saying that as long as people are using their smartphones, it\u2019s ultimately a positive for the company.<\/p>\n<p>WhatsApp announced in February 2014 that it will add voice calls to its product in the second quarter of this year. This came shortly after <a title=\"Facebook\" href=\"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/vb\/showthread.php\/348566-Facebook\">Facebook<\/a> announced that it bought WhatsApp for $19 billion.<\/p>\n<p>Free voice calls (through VoIP) from South Africa\u2019s most popular mobile messaging service should scare mobile operators, but Vodacom said that it is not concerned.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf anything, this vindicates the massive investment that we\u2019ve been making in our network \u2013 over R30 billion in the last six years &#8211; with the viability of VoIP services so dependent on the quality of the network connection,\u201d said Vodacom spokesperson <a title=\"Richard Boorman\" href=\"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/vb\/showthread.php\/244557-Richard-Boorman\">Richard Boorman<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Boorman said that VoIP services from WhatsApp could start to differentiate those operators who have been investing in their networks from those who haven\u2019t kept up.<\/p>\n<p>He added that it is not clear whether WhatsApp\u2019s voice services will have more of an impact on their voice revenues than other products like Skype, WeChat, BBM, Tango, Line and Viber.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s hard to ignore the sheer size of the WhatsApp user base, but so far we\u2019ve not seen VoIP services dramatically impacting usage patterns,\u201d said Boorman.<\/p>\n<h3 class=\"my-4\">More on WhatsApp<\/h3>\n<p><a title=\"Lethal threat which could crush Vodacom, MTN profits\" href=\"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/cellular\/97905-lethal-threat-which-could-crush-vodacom-mtn-profits.html\"><strong>Lethal threat which could crush Vodacom, MTN profits<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a title=\"Time for telecoms CEOs to worry: Michael Jordaan\" href=\"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/business\/97653-time-for-telecoms-ceos-to-worry-michael-jordaan.html\"><strong>Time for telecoms CEOs to worry: Michael Jordaan<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a title=\"WhatsApp to add voice calls\" href=\"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/software\/97423-whatsapp-to-add-voice-calls.html\"><strong>WhatsApp to add voice calls<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a title=\"Facebook to buy Whatsapp for R209 billion\" href=\"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/internet\/97101-facebook-to-buy-whatsapp-for-r176-billion.html\"><strong>Facebook to buy Whatsapp for R209 billion<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Vodacom said that people using WhatsApp on their smartphones is positive for them<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":75147,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[161,35,1167,41,23986,2032,2594],"class_list":["post-98072","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cellular","tag-facebook","tag-headline","tag-richard-boorman","tag-vodacom","tag-voice-services","tag-voip","tag-whatsapp"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98072"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=98072"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98072\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":98102,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98072\/revisions\/98102"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/75147"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98072"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=98072"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=98072"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}