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Showing posts from May, 2021

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 ...

London’s biggest divorce case hinges on a R5bn superyacht

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  22 May London’s biggest divorce case hinges on a R5bn superyacht Jonathan Browning SHARE 0:00 SUBSCRIBERS CAN LISTEN TO THIS ARTICLE The luxury yatch Luna, owned by Azarbaijani businessman Farkhad Akhmedov. (Photo by Mustafa Ciftci/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images) At the heart of the largest money fight that London’s divorce courts have ever known sits the Luna - a 115m, nine-deck luxury motor yacht holed up at a berth in a dusty marina in Dubai. The Luna is the largest and most expensive single asset held by companies linked to oil and gas tycoon Farkhad Akhmedov, who bought the vessel from his fellow billionaire Roman Abramovich. It is also the prized target for Tatiana Akhmedova, Farkhad’s former wife of 21 years. Worth about 250 million pounds (R5 billion), seizing control of the yacht would go a long way toward satisfying a London court’s 450-million-pound divorce award in her favour. But that, Tatiana is finding out, won’t be easy. With settlement talks with her former husband ...

South Africa is changing its marriage laws – but key issues are still up for discussion

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  Staff Writer 21 May 2021 Subscribe It is an incontestable fact that this country needs a new marriage policy, says home affairs minister Aaron Motsoaledi. Presenting his departmental budget speech this week, the minister said that the new policy will be based on three of the pillars of the country’s constitution – equality, non-discrimination and human dignity. The minister said that to get married in South Africa, you are required to choose between three acts of Parliament: The Marriage Act of 1961 Recognition of C ustomary  M arriage Act of 1998 Civil U nion Act of 2006 The minister  said that these  three acts have many gaps, omissions and weaknesses in that they d o not cater or give recognition to Muslim marriages, Hindu marriages and marriages conducted according to Jewish rites; He added that the current legislation fails to recognise  many traditional marriages taking place in many royal families, and do not effectively p revent  minor children fr...

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