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Make free calls with updated Facebook Messenger

Good news for smartphone owners (and potentially bad news for mobile networks) as Facebook has updated its Facebook Messenger (FM) app to allow everyone to make free phone calls over WiFi connections to other FM users. The feature has been available in several countries already in both the iOS and Android versions of the app, but has not yet rolled out to the newly released Windows Phone version of the app.

The latest updates to both the Android (version 4.0) and iOS (version 4,1) apps have the new WiFi calling feature enabled which shows a small phone icon in the top right hand corner of an ongoing chat. When the icon turns blue it indicates that both users are in a WiFi network and that the call can go ahead. Android users will still be able to make calls while in other applications with the ‘chat heads’ feature that overlays chats on top of whatever you’re doing on your phone.

The update comes amidst rumours that one of Facebook’s most recent acquisitions, WhatsApp, is also testing similar functionality for its users in the near future. It goes some way to proving Facebook’s determination to carry on with its own instant messaging platform after its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg stated categorically that WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger would both continue to exist separately.

The biggest opposition to the inclusion of voice over IP (VoIP) calls like the ones you can now make with Facebook messenger or Skype on your smartphone are expected to be the network operators who will see it as a challenge to their revenue models from voice calls. In the past, services like WhatsApp have destroyed the highly profitable SMS revenue that operators had been accustomed to making.

(With SMS by and large abandoned for data, the loss of voice calls to apps like Facebook Messenger could result in operators becoming little more than dumb data pipes. It could result in operators heavily shaping their networks to stop VoIP calling which brings up serious issues of net neutrality which ICASA is busy discussing in its probe.)

For now, get on your phone and make a few calls to your friends using Facebook Messenger and let us know what you think of the quality compared to other VoIP apps such as Skype.

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