By Leila Abboud BARCELONA (Reuters) – The worlds biggest messaging service WhatsApp, which Facebook has just bought for $19 billion, will add voice calls to its product in the second quarter of this year, its chief executive Jan Koum said on Monday. With 450 million users worldwide, WhatsApp and its competitors South Koreas KakaoTalk and Chinas WeChat have punched a hole in telecom operators revenue in recent years by offering a free alternative to text messaging. The news that the most powerful of them was adding voice calls to its service will likely be seen as worrying for telecom operators globally, which got about $120 billion from text messaging last year, according to market researcher Ovum.
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