A MyBroadband comparison of WhatsApp and regular calling prices shows one reason why mobile networks’ traditional voice volumes and revenue have plunged.
It is over 95% cheaper to make voice calls on WhatsApp with 1GB monthly data than using regular calls with prepaid voice minute bundles or out-of-bundle rates in South Africa, MyBroadband calculations show.
With regular phone calls, a caller’s audio is also digitised but not transmitted over the Internet. Instead, it is routed through mobile operators’s backhaul and core networks, which can operate independently from the Internet. Without the data-saving mode, we calculated the effective cost per minute of WhatsApp calling on all five networks to be around 2 cents on all networks.
We used these figures and compared them with the effective per-minute cost of various prepaid voice bundles and out-of-bundle rates on voice-focused plans and found WhatsApp calls were over 95% cheaper. Secondly, you must have a moderately good mobile data connection to ensure acceptable call quality. In contrast, conventional voice calls can work well even with just a few bars of 2G signal.
Headline MTN Rain Telkom Vodacom Voice Calls Whatsapp Whatsapp Voice Calling Cellular
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