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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Sasol and Toyota planning massive ‘green’ highway project for South Africa

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 14 April 2021

Sasol plans to develop the use of green hydrogen by fuel cell vehicles on a major South African freight route as the company examines ways to lower its own emissions.

Along with partner Toyota Motor Corp, it intends to develop a pilot project – using a key highway such as the N3 running between Durban and Johannesburg – for heavy-duty, long-haul vehicles powered by hydrogen, Sasol said in a statement Wednesday.

Toyota expects to introduce a prototype truck, currently being developed in Japan, as soon as it’s available.

Sasol, a top emitter of greenhouse gases in South Africa, is working toward a 2030 target to reduce emissions from its operations by at least 10% from 2017 levels.

Apart from initiatives around green hydrogen, it’s also part of a record procurement of renewable energy and is exploring the production of cleaner aviation fuel.

Hydrogen is being considered for Sasol’s existing operations, the Toyota partnership and potentially for export, Sasol Chief Executive Officer Fleetwood Grobler said in an interview.

Those plans and other initiatives to lower emissions are at an early stage, he said. “You need to start with proof of concept,” Grobler said.

Toyota’s joint-venture with Sasol could help scale up investment in critical infrastructure such as charging stations and the fuel itself, Andrew Kirby, chief executive of the automaker’s local business, said in the statement.

The company in 2014 introduced the Mirai, the world’s first commercialized hydrogen fuel cell electric sedan, he said.

Read: New push for a fuel price cap in South Africa

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