WhatsApp Partners With E-Plus To Become Mobile Carrier

E-Plus is now offering a cheap, pre-pad SIM-card that takes WhatsApp traffic off of the data plan; this means that for this pre-paid system, WhatsApp is the primary over-the-top messaging platform for communication. For €10, German E-Plus users can by the small bundle of mobile voice, data, and text messages, while utilizing WhatsApp as their primary form of communication. WhatsApp isn’t taking over E-Plus’s brand, it’s just hooking more E-Plus users into WhatsApp, effectively increasing its active user numbers. WhatsApp’s parent company, Facebook, tried to do something similar with Orange in North Africa and Eastern Europe, to exempt its messaging services from data plans. As messaging platforms become OTT data and service platforms, mobile marketers and advertisers will need to take increasing note of their prominence, as they are rapidly becoming the primary form of communication on mobile devices.