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If only my pocket WhatsApp device had other ways to contact people, now I'll have to go get a new device.

Seriously as transitions go, leaving WhatsApp and Messanger will be the smoothest most painless transition there ever was.

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In some parts of the world feature phones and some smartphones are pocket WhatsApp devices. Free data if you're using FB and WhatsApp, with phone calls and SMS also covered (but that doesn't help much with international communication, international SMS is even more unreliable than domestic SMS). It's not that they'll need a new device, they'll need a new service plan that costs more money.

My country had something like this when Facebook Zero was around but the telcos regulator ordered it off as it was a violation to net neutrality. And iirc, the same happened in India and other places where this was implemented.

Facebook Free Basics was quickly blocked in India https://www.reuters.com/article/us-india-regulator-netneutra...

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