MTN partners with Meta to enhance WhatsApp call quality and launches VideoSMS in South Africa, enabling multimedia ads via standard SMS.

MTN Group has teamed up with Meta Platforms, the social media behemoth that owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, to improve the quality of audio and video calls on apps like WhatsApp.

The two businesses will work together to optimize MTN's "application-aware networks" and "network-aware applications" that offer voice and video call services in 12 of MTN's operating markets, according to a statement.

According to the statement from MTN Group, MTN and Meta teams have been working together since Mobile World Congress 2024 to pinpoint important areas for development and carry out focused network optimizations that improve communication between mobile networks and real-time calling apps while preserving effective traffic delivery.

They have developed and implemented solutions that greatly improve the quality of experience for mobile users by utilizing data analytics and carrying out thorough testing.

MTN said that the first nation to adopt these network optimizations was Nigeria, which is its biggest market in terms of both income and customer count. As a result, the company observed voice and video call quality increases of up to 50%.

MTN Ads, the digital advertising division of MTN South Africa, has introduced a new tool that enables companies to deliver video content to customers' SMS inboxes.

The new service, called VideoSMS, eliminates the need for more complicated protocols like the MMS standard or the more recent RCS standard integrated into Google Messages on Android smartphones. It enables the sending of up to 2MB of video using a conventional SMS.