Say goodbye to ADSL in South Africa

Telkom released a trading statement for the quarter that ended 31 December 2024, revealing that the number of subscribers connected to its copper-based networks has fallen to just over 36,000.

It appears fibre sales through Telkom’s wholesale fibre division, Openserve, are growing fast enough to offset the losses from DSL customers.

For reference, Telkom had just over 77,500 xDSL subscribers at the end of December 2023. These have declined by nearly 54% in the space of a year.

In previous years, the overall number of fixed subscribers, which includes fibre and DSL customers, has declined year over year despite Openserve connecting more homes to its network.

However, the overall fixed-subscriber figure grew from 556,965 as of 31 December 2023 to 559,392 as of 31 December 2024.

While Telkom’s DSL subscriber numbers have fallen steadily from a peak of over one million subscribers in 2015 and 2016, Openserve’s subscriber numbers have been climbing.

Telkom’s trading update for the quarter ended 31 December 2024 revealed that it grew the number of homes passed by its network by 13.1% to 1.34 million homes.

It also connected more than 100,000 homes to its network, bringing the total number of homes connected to 667,465.

Telkom said it is seeing more demand for data services, with fixed-data usage increasing by 23.7% to 757 petabytes in the quarter.

Telkom’s dominance in the DSL space up until 2016 came from its effective legalised monopoly over fixed communications infrastructure.

It was the only company in South Africa that could install and manage copper networks supporting DSL and telecommunication in the country.

While residents could use third-party Internet service providers (ISPs), they ultimately depended on the state-owned telecoms firm’s physical infrastructure.

It also exploited the monopoly to make it difficult for ISPs to compete with it on pricing.

However, Telkom’s chokehold on the space broke in 2010 with the launch of affordable uncapped DSL products from Mweb and, eventually, Vumatel’s fibre-to-the-home launch in Parkhurst in 2014.

Telkom stopped reporting on its ADSL subscriber numbers for several years following these developments.

It last reported 1,011,120 DSL subscribers as of March 2016, forcing analysts to estimate its subscriber numbers in the following years by subtracting the number of homes connected to fibre from its total fixed broadband subscribers.

What followed was a sharp decline in Telkom DSL 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 an over its cellular towers.

By June 2021, the number of DSL connections had nearly halved again to 264,000.

The network operator started reporting official DSL subscriber numbers again in December 2023, when it had 82,000 customers still connected to its copper network.

Telkom’s annual results for the year ended March 2024 didn’t specify exact DSL subscriber numbers. Instead, it revealed that only around 10% of its fixed broadband lines were still DSL, which works out to about 71,800 subscribers.

Its half-year results for the period ended 30 September 2024 revealed this figure had declined further to 43,964 subscribers.

Its latest figures revealed that it had just over 36,000 DSL customers, representing a decline of roughly 96.4% since March 2016.

The chart below tracks Telkom ADSL subscriber numbers from 31 March 2003 to 30 September 2024, using Telkom’s half and full-year results.