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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All the undersea cables connecting South Africa to the rest of the world
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 Cape Town, to Sesimbra in Portugal. It landed on South African shores in 1968 and carried 360 telephone circuits.
After 25 years of use, SAT-1 was decommissioned and replaced by SAT-2, South Africa’s first fibre optic cable, in 1993.
SAT-2 ran from Melkbosstrand to Funchal, Madeira, and was the first cable to enable commercial and private Internet use in South Africa.
To expand the country’s Internet capacity at the turn of the century, the SAT-3 and SAFE cables were connected to South Africa, constructed by a consortium of telecom operators, including Telkom.
SAT-3 linked South Africa to Portugal and Spain, while SAFE connected the country to Asia.
It took another eight years for Seacom to lay the next cable, spanning 15,000 km along the country’s east coast, connecting South Africa to Europe via partners through the Mediterranean Sea.
The following year, the Eastern Africa Submarine System (EASSy) was launched, linking South Africa to Sudan via landing points in seven other countries.
The cable, which is 10,500 km long, has a two-fibre-pair configuration. MTN, Liquid Intelligent Technologies, and Telkom SA were investors in the project.
A new era of undersea cables
In 2012, the Western African Cable System (WACS) came into operation, connecting South Africa, via Yzerfontein, to the United Kingdom.
WACS was the first of the cables in the country to use generalised multi-protocol label switching, which enabled it to perform in-system wavelength restoration to increase network resilience.
The Africa Coast to Europe (ACE) and the Meltingpot Indianoceanic Submarine System (METISS) cables went live nine years later.
ACE spans approximately 17,000km along Africa’s west coast and connects 19 countries between South Africa and Europe.
METISS is a shorter 3,200km cable system that connects Mauritius, Reunion Island, and Madagascar with South Africa.
Equiano, Google’s first submarine cable connected to Africa, went live in 2023 after landing at Melkbosstrand in 2022. It connects South Africa to Portugal.
Seacom launched services on the cable in March 2023, while Liquid, Openserve, and WIOCC have also bought capacity on the cable.
At the end of 2022, MTN announced that the 2Africa cable system had landed in Melkbosstrand. The cable has also landed in Coega in the Eastern Cape and Mtunzini in KwaZulu-Natal.
However, the world’s biggest undersea cable system, at 45,000 km, intended to encompass the African continent, has yet to be completely lit up.
Since then, Google has announced the Umoja undersea cable, connecting South Africa and Australia, and Meta Platforms has announced Project Waterworth.
Once completed, Project Waterworth will be the world’s longest undersea cable, and Meta says it will be built using the highest-capacity technology available.
African undersea cables (2024). By Steve Song / ManyPossibilities.netCable station in 1879Cape Town telegraph office in 1889SAT-1 cable laying ship in 1969Laying of SAT-2SAT-3 cableSeacomEASSy landingACE submarine cable Duynefontein landing crewEquiano cable landing in South Africa2Africa landing in Yzerfontein in late 2022
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