Leadership (Abuja)
Peter Ailuorio
17 October 2007
Lagos — Globacom yesterday in Lagos announced a subscriber base of 15 million with over 12 million active subscriber-base as it gets set to formally launch its third numbering platform, 0705.
With this development, Globacom has established its second position in the Nigerian market holding strongly to over 35 per cent share of the entire Nigerian subscriber market and warming to take over market leadership in the shortest possible time.
To do this, the company according to its chief operating officer, Mr. Mohammed Jameel, is installing a capacity for over 30 million subscribers by the end of the year by adding over 150 base stations every week around the country and will have installed additional 750 base stations to its 3000 existing stations by the end of the year. According to Jameel, the equipment for achieving this phenomenal growth is already in the country and so has gone beyond mere wishes to the level of concrete reality.
The company also announced that at its current growth rate, it will soon hit 18 million subscribers and that will confer on its market leadership of the telecom sector in Nigeria in terms of subscriber base.
In a presentation delivered to senior journalists at a briefing, Mr. Yinka Akande, stated that Globacom has invested over US $3 billion in the past four years and has given direct employment to over 2500 people. And to ensure steady development of the network, it recently signed a US$1 billion equipment supply agreement with Alcatel of France and Huawei of China, covering Mobile, Fixed and Submarine Optical Fibre Cable linking Nigeria and the United Kingdom, with a dedicated link to the U.S.
On the gateway business, Globacom declared that it is one of the largest carriers of voice traffic in Africa carrying over 2 billion international minutes annually. At the local scene, Glo is the gateway for most network operators in Nigeria and the surrounding African countries and has built strategic partnerships with 43 Tier One Carriers (35 TDM and 8 VoIP) with a total of 618 E1s. Telcos like AT&T, BT, France Telecom, Sprint use Glo to connect to their customers in Africa.
Glo's international roaming services involve 193 networks in 98 countries and provide services on voice, SMS, GPRS roaming and BlackBerry services. It also provides bulk sale of bandwidth and offers access to 804 networks in 174 countries via International SMS.
Akande also stated that Glo is the first operator in West Africa to launch Gateway switches outside of Africa to carry International Voice Traffic and this accounts for its easy connection to all the big time players like BT, FT, MCI, Belgacom, ARBINET, etc. Apart from the UK, Glo has also established points of presence in France, Germany and the U.S. with five state-of-the-art Gateway switches in Nigeria- three in Lagos and one each in Abuja and Port Harcourt. It also plans additional Points of Presence in Singapore, Hong Kong, UAE and Australia. The company says its submarine cable has reached Senegal from UK and work will soon begin on the Lagos Senegal route to link both cables.
Globacom also announced the completion of two additional customer care centers which will house 600 desks each in addition to the 700 customer care desks presently working in the first centre and will revolutionise customer service in Africa. According to Akande, the customer care centre will be the largest in Africa, receiving over 150,000 inbound calls per day and housing sophisticated CRM capturing customer interaction.
Speaking on the new number range, Mr. Akande, said that "with our 0807 numbering plan having been exhausted and in order to effectively provide for the continued phenomenal growth on Africa's fastest growing network, the acquisition of another numbering plan to cope with this growth has become inevitable", adding that the introduction of a new number series, 0705, underscored Nigerians' growing preference for Globacom as the network of choice in terms of offerings, network reliability and subscriber appreciation.
Globacom's introduction of the new 0705 number range followed the exhaustion of the 0805 and the 0807 number series. The new platform, the company said, gives millions of subscribers wishing to join the Glo network the opportunity to be accommodated. It has capacity for 10 million subscribers.
Globacom's growth in Nigeria has been phenomenal. Starting two years behind other operators in Nigeria, the network has become the fastest growing in Africa and the Middle East region and is the third fastest growing network in the world. In 2006, alone, Globacom added six million subscribers to its network.
In 2006, when the 0807 number series was to be introduced into the market, Globacom also introduced the Glo Fantastic Four which allowed four members of the same family or four friends to have their Glo numbers following each other so as to allow easy recall of the numbers.
The fast paced growth of Globacom saw it winning a GSM licence recently in Benin Republic, it was further disclosed.
Be the first to Write a Comment!
Copyright © 2007 Leadership. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
