Telkom ADSL growth slows further

Telkom released its annual results for the year ended 31 March 2012 today (8 June 2012), revealing that its ADSL subscriber base grew to 827,091 at the end of the reporting period, up from 751,625 in March 2011.

Fixed line broadband, and hence ADSL, is one of Telkom’s key focus areas. Telkom CEO Nombulelo Moholi previously said that the low DSL penetration rate means that there is a big opportunity for the company to offset declines in voice revenues by growing broadband penetration.

“We are enabling our target offering through high speeds and capped and uncapped offerings which consistently provide greater value for the same price,” said Moholi.

Despite growing competition from the mobile operators and fixed wireless broadband providers like iBurst and Neotel, Telkom remains the only provider of fixed line broadband services in the consumer market.

However, in recent years the monthly growth of ADSL subscribers slowed when compared to the ADSL ‘boom time’ in 2007 and 2008. The latest monthly growth is the slowest since 2004/2005, which must be a concern to Telkom.

The following table provides an overview of Telkom’s ADSL growth since the company launched ADSL in 2002.

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