Facebook not an enemy, telecom carriers told

London

THE relationship between telecommunications carriers and messaging apps such as Facebook's WhatsApp and Messenger is "symbiotic", not hostile, Facebook chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg told a packed audience at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in a talk that ranged across subjects from providing connectivity to the world's poor to controversies over encryption.

While Facebook's billionaire founder acknowledged that "there might be tension in any relationship" he sees the interaction between telecommunications networks and messaging platforms as complementary. He said greater use of messaging services, especially to send photos and video, means more traffic - and more revenue - for telecom networks.