{"id":653229,"date":"2026-06-14T07:00:32","date_gmt":"2026-06-14T05:00:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=653229"},"modified":"2026-06-14T07:02:55","modified_gmt":"2026-06-14T05:02:55","slug":"end-of-a-painful-era-for-telkom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/fibre\/653229-end-of-a-painful-era-for-telkom.html","title":{"rendered":"End of a painful era for Telkom"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

After a decade of decline driven by an exodus of digital subscriber line (DSL) customers, Telkom’s wholesale fixed-line business, Openserve, is showing encouraging signs of a revival. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Telkom recently reported R12.63 billion in revenue at Openserve in the group’s 2025\/26 financial year, up 2.3% from R12.34 billion in 2024\/25. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This was the first time that the division increased its full-year revenue since 2017, when it started seeing a drastic decline in fixed-line broadband customers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The company’s fixed access line decline began in 2000, driven by increased cellular service uptake, which reduced demand for telephone lines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Between 2000 and 2016, Telkom fixed access lines dropped from around 5.5 million to 3 million. However, its fixed broadband subscriber base grew from fewer than 10,000 to more than 1.02 million.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That was due to its dominance in copper-based digital subscriber line (DSL) services, a product which accounted for 1.01 million customers on its own at the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The rapid deployment of fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) by fibre network operators (FNOs) like Vumatel, MetroFibre, and Frogfoot decimated Telkom’s broadband subscriber base.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Telkom failed to leverage its extensive advantage in trenched telecoms infrastructure to quickly modernise its network as fibre optic cable became the standard for fixed broadband Internet. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Financial analysts also criticised the company for frequently switching its capital expenditure focus between its fixed and mobile businesses. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

By September 2024, Telkom’s broadband subscriber base had fallen to 553,312 customers. That number has steadily climbed every quarter since.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By March 2026, the figure stood at 611,369. While still far off its peak fixed broadband customer count in 2016, Openserve also has many more third-party broadband customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Telkom’s “broadband customers” figure refers to those who are customers with its own Internet service provider (ISP) business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Telkom that ruled the South African Internet up to 2016 was a largely monopolistic creature, with many users locked to its infrastructure and using its ISP out of convenience or for bundling advantages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nowadays, Telkom must compete for its customers just like everyone else, and its users are retained based on its ability to provide good service and good value.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Closing in on one million homes with fibre<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
Telkom CEO Serame Taukobong<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In the last decade, thousands more customers joined Openserve’s fibre network through third-party ISPs such as Afrihost, Mweb, Webafrica, Supersonic, and Vox.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Openserve had 817,540 homes connected on its FTTH network by March 2026. That was around 123,000 more than a year earlier, reflecting growth of 18%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While several major FNOs slowed their rollouts between 2022 and 2025, Openserve continued to expand its network at speed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By the end of March 2026, it had passed 1.53 million homes with fibre, up by nearly 12% from March 2025. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since taking the reins at Telkom in 2022, chief executive officer Serame Taukobong has focused heavily on maximising revenue from the company’s core businesses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That included realising the potential of its extensive backhaul network. The infrastructure spans over 180,000km across South Africa, which is nine times larger than its nearest competitor’s network.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Taukobong was appointed CEO designate in August 2021. In Telkom’s financial year ending March 2022, its fibre expenditure increased by 126% year-on-year to R2.38 billion<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Under his predecessor, Sipho Maseko, Telkom spent an average of R1.44 billion per year on fibre capex between its 2015 and 2022 financial years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In his four years at the helm, Taukobong has overseen an average annual fibre expenditure of R1.59 billion, a 10.4% increase.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While Telkom has continued to invest substantially in its mobile network infrastructure, it sold its Swiftnet mast and tower business for R6.75 billion in 2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The company originally announced a plan to spin out Swiftnet into its own entity in September 2021, before deciding to sell it in 2023.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The sale was part of Telkom’s value-unlock strategy to streamline its operations, free cash flow, and focus on its core telecommunications infrastructure while paying off its debt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The move has given the company the flexibility to continue core upgrades and aggressively expand its FTTH network, without incurring high levels of debt or relying on external funding.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After a decade of decline driven by an exodus of DSL customers, Telkom’s wholesale fixed-line business, Openserve, is showing encouraging signs of a revival.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341042,"featured_media":636784,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28470],"tags":[71,78294,23297,2614,20153,33386,1355,279,109],"class_list":["post-653229","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fibre","tag-adsl-2","tag-copper-internet","tag-digital-subscriber-line-dsl","tag-dsl","tag-fibre-to-the-home-ftth","tag-openserve","tag-serame-taukobong","tag-sipho-maseko","tag-telkom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/653229"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/341042"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=653229"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/653229\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":653416,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/653229\/revisions\/653416"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/636784"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=653229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=653229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=653229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}