South Africa: Cell C offers free WhatsApp calling

During the course of January 2016, Cell C CEO, Jose Dos Santos, stated within an opinion piece that: “Over-The-Top (OTT) Regulation will protect Profits, not Customers.” According to Dos Santos, “MTN and Vodacom have declared war on consumer interests.”

This being said, Cell C has revealed that it has now opened its arms to show its support for all OTT players by making WhatsApp Calling free – from 24 January 2016 – to its customers until the end of January 2016.

According to the company, all contract customers and prepaid customers on the MegaBonus plan will be able to make calls free of charge, with no data costs incurred using the WhatsApp Calling feature.

“For two years, Cell C has embraced services like WhatsApp and Facebook by offering customers innovative and very affordable products and services. This is just one of the ways we at Cell C can express our protest at the calls by our competitors to regulate OTT services,” Dos Santos stated.

The mobile industry across the world is changing and at a far faster pace than many would have expected. Cell C understands that alienating OTT players and the unique services they offer will only disempower consumers.

By creating partnerships with OTT players, network providers have the ability to find ways for everyone to benefit. Cell C has a use case, having grown its customers using WhatsApp and Facebook since the introduction of its social application focussed products.

“These services offer some of the most affordable communications in the market today and regulating them will only increase the cost to the consumer. This at a time when the industry is being called on to lower the cost to communicate,” says Dos Santos.

Dos Santos says while regulation has its place, the focus should rather be on ways to reduce input costs of the mobile players including; infrastructure sharing, access to valuable spectrum, and the development of a national broadband network for the delivery of next generation broadband technologies.

Cell C will continue to embrace OTT services as they have become invaluable services to consumers and will voice its stance to the Portfolio Committee on Tuesday.

Customers who want to use WhatsApp Calling must ensure that their handsets have the correct settings to ensure they are not charged for data. Customers can get the correct setting by dialling *147# and selecting option 8. They can also contact the Cell C Call Centre on 084 140 for assistance.

Earlier this week, WhatsApp revealed that it will no longer be charging customers of a the service a subscription fee.

Staff Writer