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 ...

Image of bird at US-Mexico border wall wins contest

 

Alejandro Prieto's image of a roadrunner bird at the Mexican-US border wallIMAGE SOURCEALEJANDRO PRIETO / BIRD PHOTOGRAPHER OF THE YEAR
image captionMr Prieto has documented wildlife at the US-border wall and their ecosystems

Mexican photographer Alejandro Prieto's image of a bird at the US-Mexico border wall has won a prestigious photo contest.

Mr Prieto was named the grand prize winner of the Bird Photographer of the Year competition after his image was selected from 22,000 entries.

His winning photograph depicts a roadrunner bird that has stopped in front of the wall.

He says the image highlights the threat to biodiversity that the wall poses.

The US-Mexico border region is a delicate ecosystem with regular animal and bird migrations moving north and south on the American continent.

In this region, a number of species need to cross the border to mate with their genetically different cousins, including the endangered North American jaguar and the black bear, which was re-introduced to Texas in the 1990s.

"The border wall crosses deserts, mountains and even mangroves. It is not just desert, and is in fact very biodiverse with more than 1,500 animal and plant species threatened by the wall," Mr Prieto said.

"I have watched many different animals reach the wall before turning around and heading back," he added.

Mr Prieto, from Guadalajara, was awarded £5,000 ($6,877) for winning the Bird Photographer of the Year competition. Other categories included Young Bird Photographer of the Year and Urban Birds.

Mr Prieto has been documenting wildlife at the border for over a year. During that time, he said he faced harassment from border control and the constant presence of drug cartels.

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media captionChildren play together on seesaws at the US-Mexico border

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