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

Ground-breaking deal for Beitbridge border

-

  0  

Source: Ground-breaking deal for Beitbridge border | The Standard

South African lenders including Standard Bank Group and FirstRand have provided $130 million of loans for an upgrade of the Beitbridge border post.

The financing for the Beitbridge border between South Africa and Zimbabwe includes the $130 million commercial debt tranche arranged by FirstRand’s Rand Merchant Bank (RMB) unit, Standard Bank, Absa Group and Nedbank Group, according to an article paid for by RMB.

It also includes a $65 million development-finance institution tranche from Afreximbank and the Emerging Africa Infrastructure Fund.

Finance minister Mthuli Ncube tweeted that the funding showed investors’ confidence in Zimbabwe’s economic prospects.

“A syndicate of banks comprising Rand Merchant Bank, ABSA, Nedbank and Standard Bank availed part of the US$300 million for the redevelopment of Beitbridge border post,” Ncube tweeted yesterday.

“This shows confidence in the Zimbabwe economy, and future growth in regional trade activity.

“Financing for upgrade of Beitbridge border post successfully mobilised through Rand Merchant Bank in South Africa.

“The border post will be completely transformed and become more efficient. A new era is coming.”

RMB said the deal came at a time when infrastructure development and public-private partnerships were more critical than ever to stimulate economic growth.

“As the leading investment bank in the African concessions and PPP sector, we felt confident that we could provide a tailored solution despite the challenges,” RMB said.

“In many ways, this transaction blazed a trail for future deals in the sector.

“We were tasked with finding interested equity investors and lenders within a challenging jurisdiction and at a time of uncertainty in the global economic landscape.”

The bank added: “The structuring was complex and we faced intricate challenges that had to be responded to with agility and innovation.

“Typically, lenders in the African project finance sector have muted appetite for market risk, a challenge that was worsened by a pandemic and the consequent economic crisis.

“In spite of these factors, considered risk analysis and bespoke structuring helped to facilitate this project achieving financial close.”

RMB said the economic impact of the transaction was significant, both to those companies that use the border to trade, and the communities surrounding the border.

“The Beitbridge border post in the busiest border post in Southern Africa, connecting South Africa to Zimbabwe and providing a key access point for trade with countries further to the north,” the bank added.

“This border has been characterised by long waiting periods for trucks, sometimes days, before they go through the border, often travelling hundreds of kilometres to a different border to avoid long queues.

“As a result, the border post lost traffic over time.”

It said the redevelopment of the border post will make it more efficient, leading to increased regional trade, benefiting the Zimbabwe economy and South Africa indirectly.

“Through the concession, the development has a focused socio-economic impact,” RMB added.

“In addition to upgrading the ageing infrastructure at the border post itself, the concession also requires the delivery of social infrastructure to the adjacent town of Beitbridge, including a water treatment plant, housing and a fire station.”

A group of private-equity firms with a concession to operate the border post has said it will invest $300 million on the upgrade.

The Beitbridge crossing was closed for most traffic last month to stop the spread of the coronavirus.

South Africa said it will open its side of the Beitbridge border tomorrow, but Zimbabwe is yet to indicate when it would re-open its land borders after closing them last month after a spike in Covid-19 cases.

On average about 25 000 people pass through Beitbridge daily, according to Zimbabwean officials.

— Bloomberg/Staff Reporter

Related Posts:

  1. EDITORIAL COMMENT : Dollarisation was a sentence to poverty
  2. High Court orders Ncube to disclose foreign debts 
  3. $140 billion earmarked for infrastructure development 
  4. Farmers register for John Deere equipment
  5. Mnangagwa, Chiwenga throw Mthuli Ncube under the bus over Covid-19 jabs storm

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