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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South Africa could look at taxing townships and the informal economy

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 19 February 2021

“Taxing the digital economy and the informal economy could potentially bring many new taxpayers into the net, although both routes could pose considerable challenges, says Robyn Berger, executive of Tax at law firm Bowmans.

Berger argues that the untaxed, informal economy could also be a focus area for expanding the tax base.

“The biggest difficulty with this is that no one really knows the value of this economy and what level of tax revenue could be generated from it. Some estimate that it contributes billions to South Africa, making up 20% of jobs in the country,” she said.

“While the informal economy has undoubtedly been significantly impacted by Covid-19, it is likely to bounce back relatively quickly or find ingenious ways to trade through Covid-19.

“It may even grow, through the addition of individuals who have been retrenched electing to start their own businesses. Targeting this economy seems like an obvious way to expand the tax base.”

The burning question, however, is how South Africa could go about this in practice, said Berger

Berger suggests a two-pronged approach. “It would be necessary to appeal to the moral conscience of taxpayers to get them to comply and then, because these businesses are predominately cash-based, there’s a need to be able to police their compliance.”

This seems a relatively easy problem to solve, even if a technological solution is implemented gradually.

“The use of a payments system like M-Pesa, which has worked so successfully in Kenya, coupled with an application that monitors revenue and taxes it as it is generated, may be the solution.”

She also suggests instituting incentives to phase out cash over a period and to link the digital payment system to a SARS application that imposes and collects a minimum percentage-based tax on all revenue generated.

“This approach may result in increased tax revenue collections through simple reporting processes, spreading the tax burden across a wider spectrum with minimal audit activity required.”

Read: South Africa’s MTI named as the biggest crypto investment scam in the world

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