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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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Microsoft Discontinues Remote Desktop Connection Manager (RDCMan) + Invitation to Try Remote Desktop Manager (RDM

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In March, Microsoft announced that it was discontinuing Remote Desktop Connection Manager (RDCMan) due to a major security flaw (CVE-2020-0765). Here is the bulletin:

An information disclosure vulnerability exists in the Remote Desktop Connection Manager (RDCMan) application when it improperly parses XML input containing a reference to an external entity. An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could read arbitrary files via an XML external entity (XXE) declaration. To exploit the vulnerability, an attacker could create an RDG file containing specially crafted XML content and convince an authenticated user to open the file.

Here’s what ZDNet said about Microsoft’s response to the problem: “Instead of fixing the bug, Microsoft decided to retire RDCMan, seeing no reason to revive an app that received its last update almost six years ago.”

Limited Functionality

Even before this major vulnerability was discovered, many users found RDCMan frustrating and limited. For example, it lacked many of the time-saving integrations available in other (and better) alternatives. Plus, RDCMan only worked in Windows deployments. And overall, RDCMan — even by Microsoft’s admission — was always a very basic tool and never designed to handle sophisticated functions like utilizing 2FA, managing privileged accounts, securing sensitive data, generating strong passwords, creating audit logs, and so on.

Step 1: Stop Using RDCMan

If you’re a current RDCMan user, then the advice is clear: stop using it. Yes, you and your team may have been using it for years. But now that this bug has been made public, you can be certain that bad actors are mobilizing and will be specifically targeting this vulnerability. Considering the costs of a data breach (and how furious your boss would be), it’s not worth the risk.

Step 2: Give Remote Desktop Manager a Try!

If you’re looking for a free alternative to RDCMan, then Remote Desktop Manager (RDM) Free could be exactly what you need. RDM Free is designed for individual IT pros, while RDM Enterprise is designed for IT teams (co-located and remote) who need to share remote connections and privileged passwords. Here is a side-by-side comparison of the two solutions. Also, be assured that RDM Free is not nagware, donationware, or trialware. It’s a legitimate, standalone solution for IT pros that is constantly being updated.

Interested in trying RDM, but you don’t want to lose your data? Good news! You can import your sessions from an existing application or an existing file format. You can follow this online help right here.

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RDM Enterprise

Switching from RDCMan to Remote Desktop Manager (RDM) Enterprise is a significant upgrade in every area. Here is a helpful chart to help you compare the differences.

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For a complete list of features in RDM, please head over here.

Try RDM

We invite you to try RDM Enterprise free for 30 days, and to explore all of its features and functions. Then when your trial period is over, you can either purchase an affordable license (multiple options are available based on your needs), or you can switch over to RDM Free and use it for as long as you wish without paying anything.

Other Alternatives

If RDM (Free or Enterprise) isn’t the alternative to RDCMan that you’re looking for, then we suggest you head to AlternativeTo, where you’ll find profiles and reviews of various remote connection tools.

Derick St-Hilaire

Hello there! My name is Derick, and I'm part of the Devolutions Marketing Team. My job is to manage our social media pages, write blogs, and support our amazing community of IT Pros. Being a geek and a tech enthusiast myself, I enjoy discussing and writing about tech news, movies (no spoilers though!), and of course, our roster of products and solutions. I look forward to communicating with you in the comments section! You’re also always welcome to email me at dsthilaire@devolutions.net if you have any questions or need help.

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