I'm confused - SMS and other telephone services already go down. Regulating something doesn't make it more reliable.
Arguably the regulation of "classic" telephony services is what lead to the innovations of Whatsapp and everything else.
Arguably the regulation of "classic" telephony services is what lead to the innovations of Whatsapp and everything else.
Same doesn’t apply to WA.
Likewise, when Whatsapp goes down I can still talk to people on iMessage or Discord or SMS.
I’m talking about 911 being reachable, or about government communication with its citizens etc.
For these bigger use cases, there are contingency plans. For example, 911 will remain reachable via other carriers for you even when your carrier goes down.
For some governments, WA is in the critical path for these use cases. And you can’t route around WA as it’s one product by one company who is the sole maintainer of it.
Critical emergency services still have the plain old telephone services to use, no?
[1] https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/21/20974692/valentines-day-...
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/dec/06/o2-customer...
In my experience, it makes it less reliable, since that service will no longer have to compete with anybody else.