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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Cost-cutting: South Africa to close ten embassies, consulates

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 By Peter Fabricius• 28 April 2021

 Ten South African diplomatic missions are set to be axed to save costs. (Photo: Flickr / Berlin Global)

The South African government is expected to cut 10 of its diplomatic missions abroad, as a money-saving measure.

The Department of International Relations and Cooperation (Dirco) is expected to announce the closures of foreign diplomatic missions soon. It is also likely to explain which ambassadors and other diplomats in nearby countries or cities will assume responsibility for diplomatic services in the countries or cities where it is closing missions.

The eight embassies to close are in Minsk in Belarus; Port of Spain in Trinidad and Tobago; the Holy See in the Vatican; Helsinki in Finland; Muscat in Oman; Suva in Fiji; Bucharest in Romania and Lima in Peru, sources said. 

Dirco also plans to close its consulates-general in Milan, Italy and in Chicago, US. South Africa still has consulates-general in New York and Los Angeles as well as the embassy in Washington. And it will retain its embassy in Rome. 

DA foreign affairs spokesperson Darren Bergman said the DA supported the trimming down of South Africa’s international Dirco footprint.

“But that means with those savings we should be able to offer better consular services in those countries via our main or neighbouring embassies. Anything less than this is a cop-out and goes against the constitutional right of South African citizens to consular services abroad.” DM

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  • The Vatican? The place is hardly one square kilometre big.
    I do recommend the closure of the Tanzanian office as well. I experienced poor and, after a while, no service from them when Covid kicked off and we were trapped there. In what other obscure places do SA still have holiday resorts?

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