ADSL is dying in South Africa

Telkom’s fixed broadband subscribers have declined in the six months ending March 2017, according to its latest results.

Including internal lines, fixed broadband subscribers declined from 1,027,507 in March 2016 to 1,018,405 in September, and to 1,003,521 in March 2017.

These are the first declines in Telkom’s fixed broadband subscriber base since it launched ADSL in August 2002.

Its fixed broadband subscriber base declined despite solid growth in Openserve’s fibre-to-the-home network, which now passes 219,825 homes.

“The fixed-line business saw good growth in fibre subscribers, which was a combination of both migration from ADSL and new customers,” said Telkom CEO Sipho Maseko.

“Even though we are still experiencing churn in ADSL, this was offset by an increase in demand for higher speeds and larger uncapped data.”

The great ADSL migration

Telkom stopped reporting on its ADSL subscribers as a category in March 2016, and listed total non-mobile broadband subscribers in its results.

It still provided separate figures for fibre customers, however, allowing ADSL subscribers to be calculated.

With its September 2016 results, though, Telkom stopped listing its fibre subscribers separately.

Despite this, you can see in the graph and table below that Telkom must have lost a significant number of ADSL subscribers, considering that its fibre subscriber base grew, but its fixed broadband numbers dropped.

Telkom Fixed Broadband Subscribers

Now read: Openserve cuts wholesale ADSL and fibre-to-the-home prices