ADSL on its last legs in South Africa

Image
  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 ...

SA’s new data policy could harm investment and breach patent laws, say experts

 

Tech experts have warned that clauses in the government’s recently released draft policy on the use and storage of data could threaten investment in the sector and breach intellectual property rights.

The draft national policy on data and cloud, released by the department of communication, says the digital economy is integral to the development of the country and aims to guide the government policy on “data acquisition, ownership, storage, use and analytics” and improve the digital capacities of government. ..

ADVERTISING

BL Premium

This article is reserved for our subscribers.

A subscription helps you enjoy the best of our business content every day along with benefits such as exclusive Financial Times articles, ProfileData financial data, and digital access to the Sunday Times and Sunday Times Daily.

Already subscribed? Simply sign in below.

 

Questions or problems? Email helpdesk@businesslive.co.za or call 0860 52 52 00. Got a subscription voucher? Redeem it now

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Which countries have the world’s largest coal reserves?

MOTORS MARINE MAY 7, 2021 Boat of the Week: This 171-Foot Super-Luxe Sportfishing Yacht Is the Largest in the World

This New Ultralight Aircraft May Be World’s Fastest Single-Engine Business Jet