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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LONDON, Feb 15 (Reuters) - Passengers arriving in England from Monday from any of 33 "red list" countries will have to spend 10 days quarantined in a hotel room under new border restrictions designed to stop new variants of the coronavirus.

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 The launch of the system, which had already been set out earlier this month, marks the government’s latest effort to prevent another relapse into crisis after a second wave of a more contagious COVID-19 variant forced the country into a prolonged lockdown at the start of the year.

New cases, deaths and hospitalisations are falling sharply and the rollout of vaccines has reached more than 15 million people, but ministers are still wary that new mutations from overseas might unravel that progress.

“As this deadly virus evolves, so must our defences,” health minister Matt Hancock said in a statement. “The rules coming into force today will bolster the quarantine system and provide another layer of security against new variants at the border.”

The government has lined up 4,963 hotel rooms that must be booked in advance as part of a ‘quarantine package’. These hotels will have a “visible security presence”, the government said. A further 58,000 rooms are on standby.

Countries on the red list include South Africa and Brazil – both of which have seen variants of the virus that could reduce the efficacy of existing vaccines.

Ministers have been criticised by opponents for being too slow to close the door to new variants, having first announced plans for hotel quarantine in January.

Arrivals from countries not on the red list are required to quarantine at home for 10 days and take two COVID-19 tests.

The tougher quarantine restrictions also carry heavy fines and penalties with potential prison sentences of up to 10 years. (Reporting by William James; editing by Emelia Sithole-Matarise)

Information pertaining to Covid-19, vaccines, how to control the spread of the virus and potential treatments is ever-changing. Under the South African Disaster Management Act Regulation 11(5)(c) it is prohibited to publish information through any medium with the intention to deceive people on government measures to address COVID-19. We are therefore disabling the comment section on this article in order to protect both the commenting member and ourselves from potential liability. Should you have additional information that you think we should know, please email letters@dailymaverick.co.za


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