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Comment by rvr_ | Hacker News Reader

WhatsApp's success here in Brazil can be attributed to very few reasons: 1) Worked in every single smartphone (I started using it on a very resource constrained 2010's Nokia running s60) 2) SMS was and still is very expensive here. 3) Zero friction to use: it uses your phone number as your ID and your catalog list as its own.

It was a killer combination, almost everybody here in Brazil uses it, no matter how young or how old, no matter if it is a rich kid with the latest IPhone or the poor with the cheapest phone. Even the telcos had to bend to WhatsApp strength by offering "unlimited WhatsApp usage" on very limited data plans.

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Same scenario in Mexico, people in the US didn't leave SMS as fast as us because they had unlimited SMS plans. A lot of people in our countries didn't have that option, we had to pay around 20 US cents per SMS that was just insane

Same in Lebanon and several other countries in the middle east. 15 cents per SMS, now around 9 I believe. So people started using WhatsApp for all their messaging. When audio messages became a feature, people stopped using their phone service and switched to this annoying method of communication. Many people now default to WhatsApp calls for regular calls as well.

When I was there, my monthly bill was over $50 USD per month for very minimal usage of both data and calls. That's ridiculous...

The big telecom companies in Mexico like Telcel also don't charge you for WhatsApp data usage which showstops any potential competitors.

I was in Brazil during the WhatsApp ban last summer. It crippled communication, it was fascinating to see.

was there ever a reason give for it?

Brazil has a fair new "Internet law" [1] that states, among other things that:

1) Internet providers must not log any information about users traffic, except information related to the network access itself (like the IPv4 dynamic address attributed to the user's modem)

2) Application providers must log all actions performed by its users and retain for at least 6 months.

3) Any judge can request to an application owner the complete access log of anybody.

4) If the company does not comply to the request it can be fined up to 10% of its local revenue; face temporary or permanent shutdown.

WhatsApp ignored the law for two times and a 1st instance judge ordered the temporary ban to be performed by the major network providers. In both cases the order was latter revoked by 2nd instance judges.

Keep in mind that our "Internet law" was praised by everybody, including the international community, for its explicit creation of rules for internet neutrality. Turns out that the price for internet neutrality was mandatory massive surveillance

[1]: PT-BR source: http://www.planalto.gov.br/ccivil_03/_ato2011-2014/2014/lei/...

Fascism.

Regarding its availability, I think it's sad that they dropped support for Symbian OS. I wonder what made them drop an existing platform - I would've understood not bothering to develop for a new one, but not drop an existing.

Is Symbian OS still a thing? From Wikipedia:

> Nokia terminated its support of software development and maintenance for Symbian with effect from 1 January 2014, thereafter refusing to publish new or changed Symbian applications or content in the Nokia Store and terminating its 'Symbian Signed' program for software certification. (http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/news/item/18502_New_Symbian_a...)

Yep. But its very odd that so many iPhone users "facetime" and almost no one does the video chat thing on Whatsapp. Any idea why that is?

Outside of Ads the only people I see video chatting typically use Skype on a laptop, live video seems kind of bothersome when you can just record videos or take photos and share them for later viewing

Did many switch to Telegram in the last year?

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