Telkom’s real ADSL numbers

Telkom still has around 82,000 subscribers using its copper-based DSL products, over 920,000 fewer than it had less than a decade ago.

This number was revealed in the company’s most recent trading update for the quarter ending 31 December 2023.

The official figure came as a surprise because Telkom stopped reporting DSL numbers separately since its 2016 annual report.

The last officially confirmed number of DSL customers it had was 1,004,705 by 30 September 2015.

Telkom’s unwillingness to report this number came at a time when the company swung from gaining fixed broadband subscribers to losing them.

This coincided with Vumatel and several other fibre network operators (FNOs) expanding their infrastructure to provide alternative fixed Internet connectivity to DSL.

Telkom’s refusal to publish ADSL figures meant the number had to be estimated from the information Telkom was willing to share.

At the same time that it stopped reporting its DSL figures, Telkom also started reporting on homes passed and connected with fibre.

The only way to estimate the remaining DSL subscribers was to deduct the fibre homes connected number from Telkom’s total fixed broadband subscribers.

Before Telkom’s Openserve division started rolling out fibre, the total fixed broadband subscribers figure was equal to the DSL subscriber numbers, so it only seemed logical that the new tallies included fibre customers in the total.

Using this method, the number of DSL subscribers was estimated to be 1,011,120 in March 2014. This dropped to 12,211 by September 2023.

However, Telkom’s revelation that the official number of “xDSL services” was 82,000 by the end of December 2023 raised questions about what its fixed broadband subscriber and fibre homes connected figures really mean.

Given that it had completely stopped rolling out and replacing copper infrastructure several years ago, there was no chance that the number had increased within a quarter — and even less so by such a substantial number.

In addition, the number of fibre homes connected exceeded the fixed broadband subscriber numbers for the first time, at 567,289 versus 556,965.

Telkom subsequently told MyBroadband that it reports its homes connected figure according to the FTTH Council in Europe’s standard.

It considers any household with an installed optical network terminal and does not require any further equipment installation as a “home connected”. The household does not need to have an active FTTH subscription.

This means that the number of active fibre customers on Openserve’s network is lower, as not all households with drop-in infrastructure are necessarily using the network.

Without the active fibre subscribers figure, it would not be possible to calculate an accurate DSL subscriber number.

In addition, our estimate could not compensate for Telkom Retail starting to resell fibre services run by other operators — including Vumatel, MetroFibre, and Frogfoot.

The number of broadband subscribers on these third-party networks is also included in Telkom’s fixed broadband subscribers tally.

Telkom still bleeding subscribers

Although the ADSL decline might not be as great as estimated, it is still down roughly 92% in about nine and a half years.

Telkom had a substantial advantage in fixed infrastructure when Vumatel, an upstart at that point, first proved there was demand for fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) connectivity with a rollout in Parkhurst.

Telkom’s 1,019,249 broadband subscribers in March 2016 dropped to 556,965 by December 2023, while Vumatel grew to over 600,000 customers since launching in 2014.

Had Telkom moved faster to convert all its DSL customers into FTTH users, it might have been far ahead of Vumatel.

Instead, it redirected network investments to its mobile division in what some analysts believed to be a futile challenge to Vodacom and MTN, which had built up an insurmountable lead in infrastructure by the time Telkom Mobile was launched.