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Showing posts from March, 2021

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 ...

SARS looking for IT professionals to improve tax system

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  Hanno Labuschagne 29 March 2021 Subscribe The South African Revenue Service (SARS) has  announced  hundreds of vacancies for skilled workers across various fields as part of its plan to modernise its tax compliance systems with new and evolving technologies. “SARS is preparing for a future where increasingly our work will be informed by data driven insights, self-learning computers, artificial intelligence and interconnectivity of people and devices,” the tax authority stated. “Mindful of this, we are evolving our workforce to prepare for this exciting changed and changing world of work.” “Whilst we continue to develop our own employees, we invite talented and passionate executives, who share our strong public service ethos and unmistakeable commitment to improving the material conditions and wellbeing of all South Africans,” SARS said. These employees would assist in SARS’s mandate of ensuring optimal compliance with tax and customs legislation in South Africa. Availab...

ANALYSIS | Liquefied natural gas production in Mozambique and the political risk of Islamic militancy

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  Theo Neethling SHARE 0:00 SUBSCRIBERS CAN LISTEN TO THIS ARTICLE In this file photo taken on 16 February 2017, a Mozambican woman walks in Palma, a small, palm-fringed fishing town in Mozambique. PHOTO: John Wessels/AFP The escalation of violence and armed conflict in the Cabo Delgado province of Mozambique since early 2020 has raised some pressing questions over the future of liquefied natural gas investments, writes  Theo Neethling. The Cabo Delgado province in the northernmost part of the long Mozambican seaboard is now home to Africa’s three largest liquefied natural gas (LNG) projects; these projects have attracted many of the world’s major multinational energy companies, accompanied by massive LNG investments. There can be little doubt that the discovery of rich LNG reserves is a potential game changer for Mozambique’s economy and the development agenda of the country. It is potentially an opportunity for the rapid advancement of a country that currently ranks clo...

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