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 ...

First group of Zimbabweans to be deported from UK arrive home

 


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 (Photo by Tafadzwa Ufumeli/Getty Images)
(Photo by Tafadzwa Ufumeli/Getty Images)

The first group among dozens of Zimbabweans slated for deportation from Britain landed in the southern African country Thursday on a charter flight, an AFP correspondent said.

According to Harare, as many as 150 of its citizens are held in detention centres awaiting removal from the UK after being convicted of crimes.

Fourteen arrived in the Zimbabwean capital on Thursday following what the UK Home Office described in a statement as "a landmark and historic agreement to return foreign national offenders".

UK Home Secretary Priti Patel said the Zimbabweans "committed murder, rape and other despicable crimes."

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Last-minute legal challenges against the deportations delayed the removal of many among the 50 scheduled to be on the first flight.

Tendai Biti, vice-president of Zimbabwe's main opposition party the Movement for Democratic Change Alliance, urged Britain to reconsider.

"The deportation of compatriots from the UK is sad and regrettable" he tweeted.

Zimbabwe "remains an extremely fragile & vulnerable space. Political attrition & human rights abuses are increasing," he added.

But foreign minister Fredrick Shava said the returnees would not be victimised.

"There is no reason for anyone to persecute them unless an individual had a pending case which had not been finalised in Zimbabwe," he told public broadcaster ZBC.

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