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 ...

Shipping containers can go from Maputo to JHB in a day via new Komatipoort dry port

 

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A new inland transit facility between SA and Mozambique could slash transport times between the Maputo port and the region’s industrial and business hub.

DP World’s new dry port depot in Komatipoort, a town on SA's eastern border with Mozambique, operates as a bonded container facility, allowing shippers to clear customs quicker when they arrive from the Maputo port that’s a 100-kilometer (62-mile) drive away. That way, a container can reach Gauteng and SA's financial hub, Johannesburg, and capital, Pretoria, within a day of it arriving in Maputo, the Dubai-based port operator said.

Durban harbor, which handles 69% of South Africa’s maritime imports, has struggled to meet demand and cut transit times, with inbound containers spending an average of three days in the port, and those for export almost double that time.

The country plans to invest R100 billion over the next decade to increase Durban’s container handling capacity to more than 11 million units a year from 2.9 million units, President Cyril Ramaphosa said in April.

DP World’s Maputo container terminal is much smaller, with expansion underway to increase capacity to one million units a year. The company has spent $100 million expanding capacity over the last five years, and will invest another $130 million.

The company also plans to expand the Komatipoort dry port depot and build rail infrastructure that will allow it to transport containers by train from Maputo into South Africa within a year or two. That would reduce risks of shipments getting snared in congestion at the border, where queues of trucks waiting to cross can stretch for more than 20 kilometers. The expansion at the Komatipoort facility will cost R185 million, DP World said.

-With assistance from Jeremy Diamond.

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