Yeah, I can imagine the guys over at Whatsapp shaking in their boots over this one.

MTN are angry, CEO Mteto Nyati having been very vocal these last few days, about Whatsapp and its ‘freeloading’ nature. The messaging giants are owned by Facebook, Zuckerberg and his cronies having paid the small matter of $19 billion for the acquisition.

That hasn’t stopped Nyati from running his mouth, the CEO claiming that the app was ‘creating an uneven playing field’. This from the Mail and Guardian:

“You have these players which are getting huge benefits out of an industry without making any investment. How do we level the playing fields?”

“What have these over the top players invested in South Africa? Zero,” said Nyati…

“Where we would like the regulator to be playing is making sure the playing fields are level between us, the network operators and the over the top players”…

“You have to regulate them because clearly they’re making a huge amount of revenue on top of the infrastructure that the operators have paid for. Somehow they have to contribute towards the building of this infrastructure,” Nyati argued.

Ag shame man, poor MTN, the company’s continued investment into its network reaching R10 billion by the end of this year. But here’s where Nyati loses a little street cred, mouthing off that WhatsApp is just too user-friendly:

“My view is that those services have been designed in such a way so they are so customer friendly. The fact that they end up being zero-rated is a different matter, but if you look at the uptake of WhatsApp, it’s so easy for the customer,” he added.

Well how very dare they go and make things easy for us – those rascals. While you’re at it good sir, why not foul-mouth Skype for connecting families from around the world in a way so simple that even grandparents can use it. Take that granny wanting to video chat with the grandkids on the other side of the world, Nyati says the platform you use does nothing for his company and he ain’t happy about it.

This is 2015 my friend, many of us have moved past the SMS bundle game and the battle has shifted to data. You know, the stuff people use to send pictures and videos across platforms like WhatsApp?

And if you’re signing up new customers by offering them free WhatsApp well then, my buddy, it looks like the last laugh is on you.

[source:mg]