due to the new rules of European Union, whatsapp has/had one year - iirc - to open the app to talk with other apps. iirc, this started on February/March of 2024 and we are in 2025. Anyone knows more details or news about it? This is ONLY applicable to European Union countrys, iirc.
Same thing in Brazil/South America. SMS was hugely expensive and lacked features. Whatsapp showed up around the time cellphone plans were all starting to sell “X gb” of internet data and became the standard for lack of competition. Nowadays it’s so ubiquitous that we get free Whatsapp in all data plans, as not offering that would literally make your plan worthless.