MOSCOW (Sputnik) – The blackout will be in effect starting from midnight on Thursday local time.
All app developers should learn from WhatsApp-v-Brazil incident and defend against it https://t.co/yaqShBo9Su
— Darth Graham (@ErrataRob) 17 декабря 2015
Telecommunications companies have been trying to convince the Brazilian government that the highly popular messaging application, which has a free calling option, is illegal.
Because of the free service, WhatsApp has been drawing customers, particularly the youth and the poor, away from cellphone contracts.
According to TechCrunch, WhatsApp has about 93 million users in Brazil, which is 93 percent of the country’s internet population.
WhatsApp was founded in 2009 and was acquired by Facebook in February 2014. The messaging application for smartphones is the most globally popular with about 900 million users.