Not cheap! WhatsApp voice calling more expensive than you thought

WhatsApp calls require Wi-Fi or mobile data connection to allow users make ‘free’ calls to other WhatsApp contacts anywhere in the world. It’s the ‘free’ term that has been irking telcos and also fuelling the net neutrality debate in India. However, one should know there is no free lunch. WhatsApp calls could cost you a fortune, says a new research.

The AndroidPit test now reveals that calls made via WhatsApp use 1.3MB of data per minute on LTE. However, this number could vary and go as low as 600KB. This would mean a monthly pack of 500MB would vanish in 6 hours, which is equivalent to 11 minutes of traditional calling per day. This clearly means, WhatsApp calling isn’t cost effective and could cost even more than traditional calls.

In fact making traditional phone calls could cost anywhere between no cost to 50p per minute, depending upon your scheme.

“Assume that you have a 1GB plan which you use for voice calling only via WhatsApp. You’d be entitled to around 1250 minutes a month and divide this into each day, you’ll get just about 40 minutes of calling which isn’t much,” points out Mobiletor.

The test produced results that range somewhere between 800 KB to 1.3MB with an average of 960KB per minute. The Android system offered a lower average of 600KB per minute. Even if you average out both figures, it is somewhere 800 KB/minute, which is definitely not something we should rely on for calls.