A judge in Sao Paulo ordered a 48-hour blackout of the service, which is used by more than 90% of people living in Brazil.
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ReutersFacebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.WhatsApp, the popular messaging application owned by Facebook, has been banned in Brazil for two days after failing to comply with a court order, BuzzFeed News reports.
Brazilian phone companies have been complaining loudly that customers are dropping their services in favor of using WhatsApp’s free call service. The judge kept the name of the third party a secret, but it comes at a time when Brazilian cell companies are lobbying against WhatsApp taking away their SMS and voice calling business.
Blocking WhatsApp “is not the solution as it is disproportionate and affect millions of users”, John Rao, head of Brazil’s National Telecommunications Agency, said. The trafficker allegedly used WhatsApp services in the commission of crimes. WhatsApp Messenger is available for iPhone, BlackBerry, Android and Nokia and yes, those phones can all me…
Earlier, Brazilian media had reported that Judge Sandra Regina Nostre Marques applied the ban in relation to the app’s withholding of messages concerning a suspect in a drug trafficking investigation. The company tweeted it had gained 500,000 users in Brazil in three hours after WhatsApp was blocked.
There is a victor in all of this: instant messaging service Telegram, backed by Russian entrepreneur Pavel Durov, said it had registered some 1.5 million new users in several hours due to the blockage.
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At least 93 percent of Brazil’s Internet users rely on WhatsApp to communicate while avoiding some of the highest phone pricing plans in the world, according to TechCrunch. The court said that the decision was made amid a criminal procedure, but didn’t provide more details, saying the case is under seal. The messaging app’s meteoric rise in Brazil has these companies upset.
