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Showing posts from June, 2025

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 ...
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Earth’s rotation is getting slower—and it might be the reason we can breathe

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  Aldo Durán Published on June 12, 2025 0 Trends Earth’s rotation is getting slower—and it might be the reason we can breathe Imagine a planet spinning so fast that its days last just 18 hours, racing against time to catch a breath. Over billions of years,  Earth’s rotation  has been slowing down little by little, stretching our days to a full 24 hours. But this slow and steady deceleration isn’t just a cosmic curiosity, it may hold the key to why we have breathable  oxygen  in the atmosphere today. A groundbreaking study reveals a surprising connection between the  length of Earth’s day  and the rise of oxygen, an element that transformed our planet and made complex life possible. How Earth’s slowing spin changed oxygen production When  Earth  first formed nearly 4.5 billion years ago, days were significantly shorter. Thanks to the gravitational pull of the Moon, the planet’s rotation has gradually slowed down over time. Today, a full day is...
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All the undersea cables connecting South Africa to the rest of the world

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  By   Daniel Puchert An extensive network of undersea cables connects South Africa to the rest of the world, with multinational tech giants like Meta Platforms and Google helping to roll out this infrastructure. While the first fibre optic cable landed in South Africa in 1993, the country has used undersea connectivity for over 145 years. The first cable that connected the country to the rest of the world was a single-channel electrical cable rolled out by the South African Telegraph Company, completed in December 1879. This ran along the east coast of Africa from Durban and Zanzibar to Aden in Yemen. It then extended to Europe through terrestrial networks. In 1889, another telegraph cable was run along Africa’s west coast, connecting Cape Town to Europe via St Helena and the Ascension Islands. It took another 69 years for South Africa to have an undersea cable capable of telephonic communication with the rest of the world. This was SAT-1, which ran from Melkbosstrand, near C...
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MultiChoice’s BEE scheme trying to find 22 000 shareholders who are missing out on millions

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  USINESS REPORT COMPANIES MultiChoice’s black economic empowerment scheme is looking for about 22 000 shareholders who owned shares and did not receive dividends of R207 million between 2006 and 2020. Picture: Karen Sandison/African News Agency(ANA) MultiChoice’s BEE scheme trying to find 22 000 shareholders who are missing out on millions By Edward West   Feb 16, 2021 CAPE TOWN - PHUTUMA Nathi, the MultiChoice black economic empowerment scheme of more than 80 000 shareholders, is looking for about 22 000 shareholders who owned shares and did not receive dividends of R207 million between 2006 and 2020. “This money belongs to our shareholders. We’re calling on them to contact us to get their money. In these tough economic times we want to do everything in our power to give them what is rightfully theirs,” Phuthuma Nathi chairperson Mandla Langa said in a statement yesterday. Phuthuma Nathi has been paying dividends every year since the start of the scheme in 2006. Am...
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Fighting Drug addiction

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 Here's the story: We sat down with a man who had a harrowing journey with addiction. He began by telling us about his early days in tertiary education, where he would occasionally smoke dagga with friends. However, his focus remained on his studies, and he worked hard to graduate and secure a qualification. After landing a job, he started building a life for himself. He got married, bought a property, and even splurged on a car. Life was good, and he felt like he was on top of the world. But one fateful night, while out with friends, he was introduced to heavier narcotics. At first, the experience was exhilarating. He described it as an elevation from the mild high of dagga to a level 5 high, where he felt invincible and euphoric. The effects would last for days, allowing him to party from Friday to Sunday without sleep. The problem, however, began to manifest on Mondays and Tuesdays every week, when the withdrawal symptoms would kick in, and he'd struggle to function at work....
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This New Ultralight Aircraft May Be World’s Fastest Single-Engine Business Jet

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  The speedy LAR-01's automotive interior adds comfort and luxury. Plus: The wings detach, so the jet can be stored in a home garage. By  MICHAEL VERDON           Courtesy Flaris The  Flaris  LAR-01 has a number of striking stats, including being a ton lighter (literally) than its competitors, along with an unusually short-field landing capability, and detachable wings. But its most impressive number is the 250-knot true air speed, which its designers say makes it the world’s fastest business jet among single-engine very light jets and turboprop aircraft. Flaris says recent tests “confirmed the assumptions made previously” about the effectiveness of multiple systems, including its Garmin G600 avionics and Flaris Flight Assistance System flight computer, as well as the landing gear and emergency parachute system. But it also claims more impressive stats like the 250-knot TSA at 10,000 feet. Its 6,000-feet-per-minute climb rate, adds the compan...
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