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 ...

Bill Gates has a ‘message’ for Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos

 TIMESOFINDIA.COM | Sep 25, 2021, 08:59 IST

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He may have fallen down the pecking order in the billionaires’ list but Bill Gates is still the fifth richest man in the world and a force to reckon with. Gates who has been rather low-key in the last few months has come out and taken a ‘dig’ at two of the world’s richest men — Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos.
Both Musk and Bezos — the richest and second richest men in the world respectively — have been passionately working in space exploration. Bezos went on a flight to space in July this year on a Blue Origin rocket whereas Musk’s SpaceX is really busy in the area as well. In an interview with James Corden, Gates was asked about other billionaires’ interest in space travel and exploration. Gates replied, “Space? We have a lot to do here on Earth”, and also added, “I don't know - I've become obsessed with things like Malaria and HIV and getting rid of those diseases, and I probably bore people at cocktail parties talking about diseases.”
The two of the richest men in the world have been vocal about understanding the criticism of their fascination with space. Bezos soon after this maiden flight into space said that his critics were mostly right. “We have to do both. We have lots of problems here and now on Earth and we need to work on those and we also need to look to the future, we've always done that as a species and as a civilization.”
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Musk also in a documentary said that, “I think we should spend the vast majority of our resources solving problems on Earth. Like, 99% plus of our economy should be dedicated to solving problems on Earth.” He also said that “But I think maybe something like 1%, or less than 1%, could be applied to extending life beyond Earth.”
Gates has been at the forefront of working in public health care through his foundation, so his comments aren’t really surprising as such.
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