ADSL on its last legs in South Africa

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  By   Daniel Puchert Partially state-owned telecommunications company Telkom announced in its financial results for the year ending 31 March 2025 that its ADSL subscribers had more than halved to under 30,000. According to the company’s operational data, ADSL lines decreased from 64,959 in March 2024 to 29,770. This 54.2% decline highlights that the legacy broadband technology is slowly approaching the end of the road. Telkom’s ADSL business peaked at the end of March 2016 with 1.01 million subscribers — two years after fibre upstart Vumatel  broke ground in Parkhurst . What followed was a sharp decline in Telkom ADSL subscribers. Customers connected to its copper networks decreased by more than 500,000 over the next four years. This was partly driven by Telkom itself, which began actively switching off its copper network in some neighbourhoods. If it did not have fibre in the area, it would offer a “fixed line lookalike” wireless service that ran over its cellular ...
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Zimbabwe poised to be world's third largest diamond producer

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English.news.cn   2011-12-25 07:48:34

HARARE, Dec. 24 (Xinhua) -- Zimbabwe is poised to become the world's third
largest diamond producer by the end of this decade as production continues
to soar, state media New Ziana reported on Saturday.

The country which is currently the seventh largest producer in the world has
potential to supply 25 percent of global demand.

Currently the country has got four diamond mining firms operating in the
Chiadzwa fields namely Marange Resources, Mbada Diamonds, Anjin and Diamond
Mining Corporation.

The Kimberly Process Certification System recently rated Anjin was recently
certified as the biggest diamond mining firm in the world.

Western countries led by the United States have been battling to block
Zimbabwe from selling its diamonds in order to sustain effects of illegal
economic sanctions that they imposed on the country in retribution for
expropriating land from former white commercial farmers.

The country stands to earn more than 2 billion U.S. dollars per year from
the three Marange mines that have been permitted to sell so far.

According to the Diamond Industry Report for 2011, Zimbabwe's diamond output
would continue to grow. "In the last three years, Zimbabwe has become a
significant diamond producer and is forecast to become a top-three producer
by the end of this decade," the report said.

"With the changing environment in Zimbabwe, the international community is
slowly beginning to accept Zimbabwe back into the fold. Diamonds from
Zimbabwe which had been excluded from the markets in the last two years are
slowly making a comeback."

The report said despite efforts to stop Zimbabwe from marketing her gems
production continued to grow.

"Exclusion from the international diamond markets has not deterred Zimbabwe
from producing diamonds and production has been increasing exponentially
after formalization of diamond mining in the Marange area," said the report.

Currently Botswana is the top diamond producing nation in the world by value
followed by Russia and Canada.

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