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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2 top French doctors said on live TV that coronavirus vaccines should be tested on poor Africans, leaving viewers horrified
A man during a nationwide coronavirus lockdown near Durban, South Africa.
Rogan Ward/REUTERS
Two highly respected French doctors discussed on live television how a new COVID-19 vaccine under development should be first tested in Africa, "where there are no masks, no treatment, nor intensive care."
One of them, Jean-Paul Mira, even compared Africans to prostitutes who were the focus of past AIDS studies. "We tried things on prostitutes because they are highly exposed and do not protect themselves," he said.
Several African soccer stars who played in Europe, including the former Chelsea star Didier Drogba and the former Barcelona striker Samuel Eto'o, tweeted their outrage at the two medics' remarks.
A discussion between two top French doctors on live TV left viewers horrified when they proposed that Africa should become a giant laboratory for coronavirus vaccine testing because the continent lacked the resources to defend against COVID-19.
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In the segment broadcast on the French TV channel LCI, Jean-Paul Mira and Camille Locht raised the idea of testing new vaccines on impoverished African populations.
Mira is head of the intensive-care department at the Cochin Hospital in Paris, while Locht is the research director at the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research, known as Inserm.
"If I can be provocative," Mira said, "shouldn't we do this study in Africa where there are no masks, no treatment, no intensive care? A bit like we did in some studies on AIDS. We tried things on prostitutes because they are highly exposed and do not protect themselves."
Locht agreed, saying: "You are right. We are actually thinking of a parallel study in Africa to use with the same kind of approach with BCG placebos," referring to vaccination against tuberculosis that Inserm says has appeared to protect children against infections, particularly respiratory ones.
"We will in fact think seriously about it," he said.
The footage, broadcast Wednesday, triggered a deluge of outrage accusing the doctors of white colonial attitudes.
Several of Africa's leading soccer players, including the former Chelsea star Didier Drogba and the former Barcelona striker Samuel Eto'o, also tweeted their anger.
Drogba, who is from Ivory Coast, tweeted: "It is totally inconceivable we keep on cautioning this. Africa isn't a testing lab. I would like to vividly denounce those demeaning, false and most of all deeply racists words."
"Welcome to the West, where white people believe themselves to be so superior that racism and debility become commonplace," tweeted Ba, who is from Senegal. "Time to rise."
Inserm, ranked as the world's second-best research institution in the health sector, issued an official statement on Twitter saying the proposal had been "wrongly interpreted" and included the hashtag "#FakeNews."
#FakeNews Une vidéo tronquée, tirée d’1 interview sur @LCI d’1 de nos chercheurs à propos de l’utilisation potentielle du vaccin #BCG contre le #COVID19 fait l’objet d’interprétations erronées sur les réseaux sociaux. Voici les bonnes explications.
On Thursday, there were more than 6,700 confirmed coronavirus cases and 229 deaths in Africa, with many countries imposing a range of preventive and containment measures against the spread of the pandemic, according to African health officials.
France alone has logged 59,105 infections and 5,387 deaths.
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