Author: Beauty Apleni

Ahead of Telkom’s recent results announcement, I decided to revisit the annual report from 2003, the year the company listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. It was like opening a time capsule. Fixed line revenue contributed 78% of the total, mobile data sales weren’t even reported (the launch of the iPhone was still four years away), 179,000 payphones remained in use around the country, and internet customers totalled just under 99,000 as Telkom reported strong growth in ADSL and ISDN, technologies most of us have forgotten or never known. Twenty-two years later, it’s as if we’re living on a different…