Our latest Global Trends benchmark covers the regulatory treatment of apps that are used for interpersonal communications, such as WhatsApp or WeChat. The report covers 14 jurisdictions: Australia, Brazil, China, the EU, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, South Africa, Thailand, the UK, and the US.

Communications apps are analysed from three different angles:

• Legal definitions of communications apps, and their impact on the telecoms sector according to government authorities.
• Key regulatory obligations, including licensing, interoperability, and transparency requirements.
• Law enforcement requirements, including obligations to verify user identity, provide the metadata or content of communications, and scan communications for illegal content.

Communications apps do have an impact on the telecoms sector according to government agencies in the surveyed jurisdictions. But only in Korea the regulator agreed that mobile operators could block or charge an extra fee from voice over IP application providers, following a 2012 complaint.

Only the EU currently mandates interoperability between communications apps under the Digital Markets Act. The UK competition authority also has power to impose interoperability between communications apps, but no obligation was imposed yet.

Despite a growing concern about users spreading illegal and harmful content over communications apps, mandatory scanning of communications was proposed only in the EU for child sexual abuse material.

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