Just almost a month ago, Facebook introduced free video calls through its Messenger app and opened it to just 19 countries initially. They did promise that it will be coming to regions other than North America and Europe pretty soon. Well, they have confirmed today that they indeed have fulfilled that promise by rolling out this feature to a global audience, give or take a few countries. But even those who don’t have it now will eventually do so, once quality has been improved.
Towards the end of April, Facebook announced that they were bringing free video calls to Messenger, keeping it at par with other messaging services like Hangouts, LINE, Apple’s FaceTime, etc. You could start making the video calls while in a conversation or you could search for your contact and then make the voice call from there. It is also platform-agnostic so it didn’t really matter what gadget you were using, as long as you have Messenger installed. When it was launched, it was only available in 18 countries (Belgium, Canada, Croatia, Denmark, France, Greece, Ireland, Laos, Lithuania, Mexico, Nigeria, Norway, Oman, Poland, Portugal, the UK, the US and Uruguay), with some seemingly chosen at random.
But today, David Marcus, vice president of messaging products, announced on his page that they have brought voice calling to the global Facebook market. He also confirmed that there were several countries where the service will not yet be available as they are still “working on improving quality”. He also responded to one commenter from the UAE, which is one of the countries that don’t have it yet, saying that some operators were blocking it.
Facebook didn’t really specify how many countries and which specifically are still unable to make video calls using Messenger. If you live in one of those countries, do let us know, and hopefully over the next few days, the feature will come to you eventually.
SOURCE: Facebook
