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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Three entirely new lifeforms discovered on space station
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A new species never seen before by science was discovered on the space station through advanced genetic testing.
Three new lifeforms have been discovered in different locations on the International Space Station (ISS), potentially offering researchers a new way to grow food in space.
American and Indian scientists have examined four bacterial strains from the station and found that the three belonged to a species previously unknown to science.
The rod-shaped bacteria were found roughly five years ago in different locations on the station: one on the surface of a dining table, one on an overhead panel at a research station, and another in the Cupola observatory dome.
Image:One was found inside the Cupola dome on the station
As the bacteria are proven to be able to survive the conditions of the ISS, they could contribute to humans growing food in space, according to the researchers.
University of Southern California geneticist Dr Swati Bijlani, who led the research, proposed naming the new species Methylobacterium Ajmalii in honour of Ajmal Khan, an Indian biodiversity scientist.
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The discovery was published in the journal Frontiers in Microbiology and NASA believes the species offer enormous potential for growing food on missions to Mars.
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The species is involved in a number of essential agricultural processes, including nitrogen fixation, phosphate solubilisation, abiotic stress tolerance, plant growth promotion, and biocontrol activity against plant pathogens.
NASA's Dr Kasthuri Venkateswaran and Dr Nitin Kumar Singh said that the strains might possess "biotechnologically useful genetic determinants" for the growing of crops in space.
However, they cautioned that further experimental biology would be required to prove that the new species of bacteria is as much of a space farming game-changer as they suspect.
Image:The discovery, scientists say, could help with the growing of food for missions to Mars
"To grow plants in extreme places where resources are minimal, isolation of novel microbes that help to promote plant growth under stressful conditions is essential," they said.
"Since our group possess expertise in cultivating microorganisms from extreme niches, we have been tasked by the NASA Space Biology Program to survey the ISS for the presence and persistence of the microorganisms.
"Needless to say, the ISS is a cleanly-maintained extreme environment. Crew safety is the number one priority and hence understanding human/plant pathogens are important, but beneficial microbes like this novel Methylobacterium ajmalii are also needed."
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