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 ...

More South Africans are leaving for Canada

 

Recently published immigration data from Statistics Canada shows that the rate of South Africans entering Canada is accelerating, says Nicholas Avramis, immigration consultant with Beaver Immigration Consulting, based in Johannesburg.

Between 2015 and 2020 over 25,000 South Africans obtained either temporary status, permanent residency or citizenship in Canada. And between 2015 and 2019 there was a 67.3% increase in South Africans obtaining permanent residency and a 75% increase in the number of study permits.

Overall, there was a 37.5% rise in the number of South Africans entering Canada prior to the Covid-19 global pandemic in 2020, he said.

“While the coronavirus threw the numbers off for 2020 it is clear that there has been an 18% year-over-year average increase in the number of South Africans admitted into Canada as permanent residents from 2015 to 2019,” Avramis said.

He said that there is both a push and pull effect that is seeing more South Africans heading to Canada to begin a new life.

“These numbers should not really surprise anyone in the industry, as the timeline associated with this upward trend matches the Government of Canada’s 2018 announcement that it will admit one million permanent residents by the end of 2021,” he said.

Despite the global pandemic, the government of Canada is on track to meet this target, he said.

“What was lost in the news cycle late last year was the Canadian immigration minister’s announcement that Canada plans to welcome another half a million permanent residents by the end of 2023,” Avramis said.

Data shows that around 5,000 South Africans enter the Canadian immigration system for processing every year.

“Based on the economic head winds in South Africa today, and coupled with the Canadian government’s aggressive immigration targets for the coming decade it is very possible that the number of South Africans heading to Canada on a yearly basis will double to 10,000 by 2025.

“If these numbers hold you will get close to about 80,000 to 100,000 South Africans in total by 2030,” Avramis said.


Read: South African businesses are looking at Canada post-Covid-19 – particularly from this one sector

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