Hacker News Reader

Comment by occam65 | Hacker News Reader

That made me legitimately chuckle!

Though think about how popular of a communications platform that WhatsApp is, particularly in parts of Asia and Africa. It's transformed the communications industry in those areas!

That still may not account for the relatively small difference between the two, but it helps put into perspective exactly why WhatsApp was so valuable.

View on HN

I think WhatsApp is great, but is something that _didn't need to exist_. And by that I mean, the carriers structured their SMS fees in a way that did not mirror technical reality. "Data" was billed a more realistic rate as opposed to hyper-inflated SMS rates and allowed SMS type-traffic to flow over the data channel.

Had carriers priced themselves properly, WhatsApp would have never had a foothold.

Not a SMS pricing issue. I believe it's the fact that it costs anything at all. When wifi is free, and you have a method that enables communication without a phone plan.. that's goodness.

Correct, but that is a failure of the carriers not supporting their customers. Cellular carriers should be supporting VOIP over data (3g,4g) and internet wifi. But since they are rent seeking, they won't disrupt their voice and sms traffic, enabling plays like WhatsApp.

No debates there; it will be interesting to see how phone carriers fight being 'dumb pipes', which I believe we all want to see as inevitable.

PSTN and TV are dead, they just don't know it yet.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com