Arguably the regulation of "classic" telephony services is what lead to the innovations of Whatsapp and everything else.
Same doesn’t apply to WA.
[1] https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/21/20974692/valentines-day-...
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/dec/06/o2-customer...
Likewise, when Whatsapp goes down I can still talk to people on iMessage or Discord or SMS.
I’m talking about 911 being reachable, or about government communication with its citizens etc.
For these bigger use cases, there are contingency plans. For example, 911 will remain reachable via other carriers for you even when your carrier goes down.
For some governments, WA is in the critical path for these use cases. And you can’t route around WA as it’s one product by one company who is the sole maintainer of it.
Critical emergency services still have the plain old telephone services to use, no?
In my experience, it makes it less reliable, since that service will no longer have to compete with anybody else.
* Have at least 2 or 3 mobile networks; if 1 fails, people can still dial 112 (911) over the remaining one(s)
* If banks break down, you can still withdraw up to €xyz from an ATM during the emergency
* Even if all mail isn't delivered on all days, letters from the government or letters announcing someone died are still delivered
* If a city is "serviced" by two highways they can't both be closed at the same time
* Etc.
In some countries, governments (or utilities etc.) use WhatsApp in critical processes and communication. So just like the things above, WA should be considered in these contingency plans. Stuff like:
* WhatsApp cannot be the only contact info agencies have - they need at least a backup contact method
* Facebook should announce maintenance activities to WA to these governments in a standardized fashion
* Facebook has to commit to keeping (the main functionality of) WA free of charge
* Etc.
If Facebook doesn't want to commit to stuff like that - fine, but then the consequence should be that WA is no longer considered a valid tool for critical communication, as Facebook then clearly sees it as a "hobby app" that can go down for hours without real consequence.
With great power comes great responsibility.