Unfortunately we're unlikely to know if it's:

- cheaper social

- more expensive non-social

- combination of those two

I really don't expect it's the first option, unless they're really in a race to the bottom. The third option makes sense even without subsidies - offer something "nice" to typical customers and offset it with other traffic.

There is no actual difference between those three options.

The only thing that matters is that Whatsapp messenger is cheaper to use than, for example, signal messenger.

There is a difference to people who actually care a lot about how much they spend. A deal with FB may mean a local cache/interconnect and actual cheaper prices. Making other things more expensive because you're just trying to differentiate from competition is a money grab.

> Making other things more expensive because you're just trying to differentiate from competition is a money grab.

How does this make any sense? If anything, making general access more expensive is going to drive consumers to move to a different provider.

In a perfect world - yes. But phone/network providers have some weird tendency to end up being mono-/oligopolies. They like when prices are high at every provider, even without "real collusion".

For example look at roaming rates in Europe. For decades sending messages/data from another country was crazy expensive - with every single provider. Once EU ruled that roaming charges in the EU should not apply, there was no crisis or huge rise of prices to compensate the losses. Once it was forced, companies started to race each other to announce how awesome they are, being the first in the country to provide free roaming.

There is because it's quite different if you get one thing cheaper than normal, or if you get another more expensive than normal. Imagine next time you climb into a taxi the driver says "just for you I'll charge 20% extra". Pretty sure it will be different from hearing that somebody else got a 20% discount.

So making WhatsApp cheaper than the base price is one thing. Making Signal more expensive than the base price is quite different.

As access to competing services gets heterogeneous, it's certainly bad for every potential competitor.

> As access to competing services gets heterogeneous, it's certainly bad for every potential competitor.

And then for all the customers, as the incumbents having established a moat can become increasingly abusive.