ADSL on its last legs in South Africa

-
Image
  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 ...
Post a Comment

Profile: Kim Jong-un

-
Kim Jon-un, 10 October 2010 Kim Jong-un was educated in Switzerland

Kim Jong-il dead

Kim Jong-un has taken on the mantle of North Korea's supreme leadership with little political or military experience behind him.
But he was named head of the party, state and army within a fortnight of his father's death on 17 December 2011.
Kim Jong-il, North Korea's "Dear Leader", was in the process of grooming Kim Jong-un as his successor when he died.
Immediately after his father's death, Jong-un was hailed as "the great successor".
But little is known about the elusive young man who is the youngest son of Kim Jong-il and his late third wife Ko Yong-hui,
Born in 1983 or early 1984, he was initially not thought to be in the frame to take up his father's mantle.
Analysts focused their attention on his half-brother Kim Jong-nam and older full brother Kim Jong-chol.
However Kim Jong-nam's deportation from Japan in May 2001, and middle brother Kim Jong-chol's apparent "unmanliness" improved his chances.
Analysts saw him as the coming man after he was awarded a series of high-profile political posts.
'Morning Star King'
His mother was thought to be Kim Jong-il's favourite wife, and she clearly doted on her son, reportedly calling him the "Morning Star King".
In his 2003 book, I Was Kim Jong-il's Chef, a Japanese man writing under the pseudonym Kenji Fujimoto also claimed that Jong-un was his father's favourite.
In August 2010 Kim Jong-il visited China. One South Korean TV station cited a South Korean official as saying Kim Jong-un had accompanied his father on the trip.
Image of Kim Jong-un shows him as a young boy aged about 11 This image of Kim Jong-un shows him as a boy aged about 11
Some reports speculated that he had been anointed successor partly because of his resemblance to North Korea's founder Kim Il-sung.
A few North Korea watchers went so far as to say that he may have had plastic surgery to enhance the resemblance, in a country where the deification of the Kim family is at the heart of its grip on power.
There have already been poems and a song, Footsteps, composed, to promote the young man's virtues as a leader.
However, there has also been much speculation that the man being lined up as the "power behind the throne" is Chang Song-taek - the husband of Kim Jong-il's sister and director of the administrative department of the North Korean Workers Party.
Some analysts see him acting as a "regent" to Kim Jong-un until he is ready to rule on his own.
Swiss-educated like his brothers, Kim Jong-un avoided Western influences, returning home when not in school and dining out with the North Korean ambassador.
Since his return to Pyongyang, he is known to have attended the Kim Il-sung Military University.
But little has been made public about his character.
Kim Jong-un shares some of his late father's health problems, and is reported already to have diabetes and heart disease due to a lack of exercise.
He is reported to be a fan of NBA basketball.
But these details, as with many others in secretive North Korea, are impossible to confirm.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

If everyone on Earth sat in the ocean at once, how much would sea level rise?

-
Image
  There are a lot of people, but the oceans are very big.   Rosley Majid/EyeEm via Getty Images If everyone on Earth sat in the ocean at once, how much would sea level rise? March 29, 2021 2.07pm SAST Author Tony E. Wong Assistant Professor of Mathematical Sciences, Rochester Institute of Technology Disclosure statement Tony E. Wong does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment. Partners Rochester Institute of Technology  provides funding as a member of The Conversation US. The Conversation is funded by the National Research Foundation, eight universities, including the Cape Peninsula University of Technology, Rhodes University, Stellenbosch University and the Universities of Cape Town, Johannesburg, Kwa-Zulu Natal, Pretoria, and South Africa. It is hosted by the Universities of the Witwatersrand and Wester...
Read more

Andrew Watson: The 'most influential' black footballer for decades lost to history

-
Image
  By Andrew Aloia BBC Sport Last updated on 11 October 2021 11 October 2021 . From the section Football Watson was a trailblazer who helped transform how football was played There are two murals of black footballers facing one another across an alleyway in Glasgow. One helped shape football as we know it, the other is Pele. Andrew Watson captained Scotland to a 6-1 win over England on his debut in 1881. He was a pioneer, the world's first black international, but for more than a century the significance of his achievements went unrecognised. Research conducted over the past three decades has left us with some biographical details: a man descended of slaves and of those who enslaved them, born in Guyana, raised to become an English gentleman and famed as one of Scottish football's first icons. And yet today, 100 years on from his death aged 64, Watson remains something of an enigma, the picture built around him a fractured one. His grainy, faded, sepia image evokes many differen...
Read more

Which countries have the world’s largest coal reserves?

-
Image
  Visual Capitalist Elements   | September 15, 2021 | 8:58 am   Intelligence   Australia   USA   Coal   The Countries With the Largest Coal Reserves Cheap and abundant coal remains one of the largest sources of energy worldwide, even as governments set out goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. While jurisdictions in Europe and North America have been phasing out coal use in power generation, it has been on the rise in Asia. China and India are scrambling to provide electricity to a growing population and relying on coal power plants to meet demands despite the environmental costs. SIGN UP FOR THE ENERGY DIGEST Sign Up This infographic takes a look into the  BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2021 , and the 11 countries that make up  89%  of the coal reserves globally. Coal Reserves, by Country While countries need to phase out coal by 2040 to achieve the Paris Agreement goal of limiting global warming to 1.5ºC, consumption in key ...
Read more