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 ...

POLITICS Cele doesn't want to spill the tea after Zuma meeting, but daughter Dudu provides the snacks

   

18 February 2021 - 14:45
Former president Jacob Zuma met police minister Bheki Cele in Nkandla, KwaZulu-Natal, on Thursday.
Former president Jacob Zuma met police minister Bheki Cele in Nkandla, KwaZulu-Natal, on Thursday.
Image: Supplied

Police minister Bheki Cele had a three-hour-long meeting with former president Jacob Zuma at his Nkandla home in northern KwaZulu-Natal on Thursday. 

After the meeting, Cele got into his police vehicle and ignored dozens of members of the media camped outside the entrance to Zuma's guarded homestead. 

Cele's spokesperson Lirandzu Themba told TimesLIVE that she wasn't present at the meeting and was therefore not privy to the discussions between Zuma and Cele. 

The agenda for the meeting was not disclosed, but it comes as Zuma faces the prospect of jail time over his defiance of a Constitutional Court order to appear before the commission of inquiry into state capture, which has been widely reported on in recent weeks.

However, shortly after the departure of Cele's convoy, Zuma's daughter Duduzile Zuma-Sambudla took to social media, saying that the visit featured no tea, just “great conversation and laughs”.

She added that there was much mirth around Cele being the one to execute a warrant of arrest for her father, should it be executed.

When Cele arrived at the compound shortly before 11am, he was met by an unwelcome reception of Umkhonto we Sizwe military veterans, who stopped his entourage in their tracks after they attempted to enter Zuma's homestead.

Cele's bodyguards were able to come to an agreement with the vets, who had previously vowed to lay down their lives for Zuma.

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