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 ...

TOTAL SHUTDOWN Google Maps, Gmail & YouTube will be blocked on MILLIONS of phones within days

 Tech

TOTAL SHUTDOWN 

Google Maps, Gmail & YouTube will be blocked on MILLIONS of phones within days

GOOGLE is just days away from shutting down access to some of its most popular services on older smartphones.

The search giant has confirmed that a handful of Android devices will lose access to Google Maps, YouTube, Gmail from September 27.

Some older Android devices are losing access to Google's suite of apps
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Some older Android devices are losing access to Google's suite of appsCredit: Getty

Unless they update their phones or swiftly buy a new mobile, millions of people across the globe will be locked out of the software.

Google announced the deadline in a short post on its website.

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The tech titan said it plans to block users from signing in with their Google Account on devices using Android 2.3.

The ageing version of Google's operating system launched in December 2010.

Google said it's withdrawing support for the platform "as part of our going efforts to keep our users safe".

The California search giant regularly drops support for ageing versions of the Android software as it releases new ones.

That's because older versions of operating systems are far more vulnerable to bugs and hackers.

The latest version of Android is Android 11, so 2.3 is miles behind the software running on most Android smartphones today.

In February 2017, Google suspended Google Pay contactless payments from working on handsets running Android 2.3.

Later this month, anyone using a device running the software will find that they're unable to log in to their Google account.

They'll receive a username and password error, even if they've plugged in the correct credentials.

Trying to add a Google Calendar or Gmail account to the settings menu of the device will result in the same error.

Other popular Google apps will also stop working, including YouTube, Google Play Store, Google Maps, Gmail, Google Calendar, and more.

To continue using these apps, you'll need to upgrade your smartphone to Android 3.0.

You can do that by heading to your device settings and tapping System > Advanced > System Update.

However, since not all devices running Android 2.3 are able to make the jump to the next version, some users will be locked out for good.

Smartphones that remain stuck with Android 2.3 include Sony Xperia Advance, Lenovo K800, Sony Xperia Go, Vodafone Smart II, Samsung Galaxy S2, Sony Xperia P, LG Spectrum, Sony Xperia S, LG Prada 3.0, HTC Velocity, HTC Evo 4G, Motorola Fire, and Motorola XT532.

If you're unable to upgrade your device, you can always work around the issue by logging into services like YouTube via your browser.

Devices using Android 2.3 will lose access to YouTube, Google Maps and more
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Devices using Android 2.3 will lose access to YouTube, Google Maps and moreCredit: SOPA Images/LightRocket via Gett

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Google Earth reveals eerie satellite views of New York on 9/11 two decades after terrorist attacks

In other news, every grave and memorial in England's 19,000 graveyards is being mapped as part of a new project dubbed "Google Maps for graves".

TikTok has had to ban a dangerous viral “milk crate challenge".

WhatsApp is working on a feature that could see your messages disappear after 90 days.

And, Twitter is having to make changes to its redesign of the app after users complained about headaches and migraines.


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