I really don't get the point about WA outage being a catastrophe. WA pretty much forces you to put all phone numbers in your contacts to communicate to anyone at all (ok, except group chats to an extent). Why can't you just send an SMS? Why can't you call? Even if it is across the border, just send an SMS: "hey buddy, WA is down, install telegram so we can talk tonight as we agreed to".

I could understand the same argument about FB Messenger, I do occasionally talk to people I have no contacts except Messenger. But we also talk once a month or so, a few hours of outage isn't a huge deal, is it?