Glo @ 20: Pioneering transformational innovation with excellent service delivery

 

UGO AMADI

“Excellence is never an accident. It is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, and intelligent execution; it represents the wise choice of many alternatives – choice, not chance, determines your destiny.” Aristotle.

As Nigeria’s telecommunications giant and foremost digital services company, Globacom celebrates its 20 years of innovative and excellent service delivery,  it has extended its heartfelt gratitude to Nigerians for their unalloyed support for the past two decades that the company rolled out services

 

Having commenced operations on Tuesday, August 29, 2003, Globacom prides itself as a leading digital service provider that has consistently brought innovation, quality service delivery, and affordable telecommunication services to its subscribers across Africa and the globe in general.

 

For Glo “Excellence is never an accident. It is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, and intelligent execution.’ No doubt, the company has continued to record unprecedented growth and dominance since its establishment despite the challenges the sector has faced in harsh operating environments.

 

Daily Champion captures the growth of an outstanding indigenous company that has continued to drive transformational innovation and digitalization in the telecommunications space. It has also restated its commitment to continuous delivery of innovative products and services and greater benefits to its subscribers and business partners all over Africa.

 

With two decades of innovative and groundbreaking operations already achieved, and with over 61 million subscribers across the board, the digital solutions provider has set marvels on more cutting-edge and futuristic packages to ease corporate and individual lives.

As a matter of fact, this will range from digital packages to promote big corporate entities and grow Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), personal entertainment, including the GLO TV with over 50 live channels and exclusive Glo original movies premiering, to the more advanced and futuristic (in-Nigeria) driverless cars on the digital terrain.

It is already with us, given the network’s penchant for smashing competitors’ world of impossibilities – like crashing their price of SIM card from N25,000 to N200, and pioneering per second billing five years since the frontrunners started ripping off the entire nation with their N50 per minute (most often per second with the incessant dropped calls) billing.

 

In the past, Glo had pioneered many innovations in Nigeria, including Blackberry, Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS), Magic Plus, Glo Direct, Glo Fonepals, Africhat, Glo Mobile Internet, GloFleetmanager, M-Banking and Glo Mobile Office.

Being the first to launch the 2.5G, 3G and 4G LTE networks, it also singlehandedly built Glo 1 – the international submarine cable directly connecting West Africa to the United Kingdom and the entire world, including 12 West African nations. Expectedly, it also crashed the cost of internet services and the global OTT providers’ preferred cable system, just as it connects all parts of Nigeria with thousands of kilometres of national optic fibre.

As it storms into another decade, the company said ahead its “Evening with Glo” last weekend: “We have carried out huge network investments in the following areas to ensure we provide our customers with desired LTE advanced ultra-high-speed streaming quality and experience: Rollout of LTE Advance to all our sites nationwide has been completed.

“Currently, we are upgrading our LTE sites with additional spectrum resources nationwide, geared towards ensuring that we always provide premium voice and high-speed data user-experience. Our national optic fiber and IP/MPLS backbone and metro network is also currently being expanded with additional 5,000km from current span of 14,000km.

“Further capacity expansion of our Glo1 submarine optical fiber infrastructure from Lagos to London is ongoing to accommodate our massive data growth for our direct interconnectivities with ISPs and cooperate bodies across all sectors of the economy.

“We have also embarked on rollout of new additional sites to further expand our footprint nationwide with additional scope of 2,000 sites per year. This is to address the densification and coverage enhancement due to constantly growing capacity demand trends.”

To remain on top, however, Glo has 9109 Advanced LTE sites across Nigeria, with 1262 new sites currently being rolled out to boost coverage and capacity demands, and 2000 new sites to be added yearly for the next four years.

In the past one year, it installed hybrid power solutions with Li batteries to improve up-time in 600 sites, and also replaced 4000 old batteries in BTS sites to enhance back-up time.

In its transmission network expansion programme, it upgraded IP Backhaul from 300Gbps to 600Gbps, core IP platform capability from 200Gbps to 2Tbsp between Lagos, Ibadan, Benin, Abuja, Ilorin, Enugu and Port Harcourt, while adding 36 new DWDM nodes to cater for new fiber routes providing additional protection for Enugu, Ilorin and Kano regions, among others.

Of interests to business concerns across demographics, especially for social media needs, is the Glo direct interconnectivity with Google, Youtube and Facebook, which uses 200G capacity in Nigeria to provide better browsing speed and customer experience, while upgrade by upgrade with additional 100G is in progress.

Currently, its transmission network expansion for domestic and international routes has seen the deployment of 1500 High-capacity MW links to backhaul new Advanced LTE sites, high-capacity links deployed in Lagos, Benin and Abuja metros to protect data and voice services, while 680 existing MW links upgrade is in progress to increase data throughput, as well as Glo1 submarine cable capacity expansion and Glo1 landing station domestic capacity backhaul upgrade.

 

For voice clarity, the network has also four new cloud MSC (Victoria Island, Oregun, Benin and Abuja) with 440k Erlang Traffic capacity, and three new SBC (Lagos, Benin and Abuja) with 160K session capacity addition to mitigate congestion on interconnects.

Also, new Cloud Data Core platform was commissioned and integrated in Victoria Island and Benin; old GGSN and CG platforms migrated to new Cloud UGW and CG, while over 150 Private Enterprise Connection and SIP connections were created.

The voice and data core network expansion will include new cloud MSC and SBCs planned for PH, Kano and Ibadan, and additional 200Ggps PS Core and 4Mn additional PDP sessions, while upgrade is ongoing to address the injection of over 6,000 additional Advanced LTE sites in 2024.

Glo has already set out its future transmission plans to include providing “additional redundancy for Core IP network, while order has been placed to deploy dual core routers in Lagos, Ibadan, Benin, Abuja, Ilorin, Enugu and Port Harcourt.

Others include transport and IP backhaul capacity enhancement to 100Gbps for Northern Nigeria and 800Gbps for Southern Nigeria; additional 500km fiber protection routes and city metros are in progress to improve the availability of 2G,3G and 4G services, while high-capacity MW will be deployed to support additional broadband and radio sites traffic backhaul. Also, 280 additional IP POPs are planned for Abuja, Ibadan, Benin, Port Harcourt and Lagos metros in 2024.

 

Nevertheless, with the core of its business drive being to innovate, provide value and enhance lives, Glo has continued to invest in life-changing experiences for many. In the past one year alone, its reach-out have included a combo of 20 houses, 24 cars, 100 generators, 1,000 fans and 200 sewing machines in a single promo.

 

The others are the Berekete 10X, which gives the new subscriber instant N1000 bonus airtime, 400 per cent voice bonus on every N100 recharge, and 500 per cent data bonus on every N100 recharge for four months, while call tariffs for voice has remained 11k/s to all networks – the lowest. There are also the Glo Prime, Glo Sponsored Data and Gifting, Glo Business Outsourcing, and Glo SME in a Box.

 

However, there are other various milestones that have defined Globacom’s disruptive entrance, impressive growth  and supremacy in the  telecom sector irrespective of the fact that it started operation few years after the other GSM companies.

As the first Nigerian multinational telecommunications company with good standing and most respected grandmasters of data, Glo was established by Dr.Mike Adenuga Jr, a man of vast fortune, who turned 70 this year. Forbes latest ranking indicated that Adenuga grew his wealth from $6.1 billion last year  to $7.3 billion last year while his Real Time Net Worth stands at $3.3B as of  November 29, 2023. He remains Nigeria’s second richest man, sixth richest person in Africa, number 418 in the Billionaires 2023 list in the world and built his fortune in telecom and oil production.

Interestingly, Glo is a household name and subscribers continue to express joy with the performances of the company in the last 20 years of its existence. Its leadership, according to industry analysts, may not be unconnected with its reputation as the network with the widest 4G LTE coverage in the country and its consistent improvement in data services.

Born to make telephony and allied services accessible and affordable to every African across all levels of society,  Glo from inception espoused such fundamental values such as providing world class cutting edge, up-to-the-minute technology; best value for money; never-say-die spirit and its pride in the Nigeria heritage.

Indeed, Globacom has continued to live up to its corporate vision of  building Africa’s biggest and best telecommunications network . This is a however a tall dream for a company that started 20 years ago and aiming towards surpassing  its goal through continuous innovation and being one of the best telecommunications services providers in Nigeria.

The company gained its reputation of being a pace setter by continuous innovation in Nigeria/Africa telecommunications industry and has been able to distinguish itself from other mobile phone service operators by being the first to introduce new products and services to its customers.

Proudly Nigerian and distinctly pro-people, Glo was first to extend Free Access lines to government ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs). It was the first operator to launch 3G Plus services which in addition to giving customers high- speed mobile internet access, allowed them to do video calls and video streaming on their 3G mobile handset.

In 20 years of operation in the country , Glo has emerged the biggest promoter of African football. For many years, it sponsored the Super Eagles and the NFF as well as other national teams, the Supporters Club, Glo CAF Awards and Glo Soccer Academy among others. With a well-defined brand strategy of supporting cultural festivals and initiatives, Glo has emerged the biggest corporate supporter of Nigerian arts and culture with its sponsorship of the Ojude Oba, Lisabi, Ofala festivals, amongst others.

Globacom launched its fixed line services in pursuit of its goal to become a one-stop telecommunications solutions provider with services extending to the last mile.

Also, it is the biggest supporter of Nigeria’s entertainment industry, the first telecom company to use Nollywood stars as brand ambassadors, thus re-inventing and rehabilitating aging stars of stage and screen. The company has also emerged a strong supporter of Nigerian music, comedy and acting.

On the other hand, Glo Entertainment Portal offers a single point of access for millions of digital entertainment content through Glo Café offering over two million local and foreign songs; over 12,000 Hollywood, Nollywood, Bollywood movies on Glo movie Café; access to more than 10,000 games from top gaming developers across the globe; music! comedy, sports and short videos from top music channels and more than 62 live channels on Glo Mobile TV.

Its  sponsorship of literature has set the pace for other telecom companies. Its support of the Wole Soyinka prize was globally applauded while its “Evening With WS” events remain the gold standard.

Iti s playing a leading role in the country’s march to a digital future with a range of customized and community-driven voice and data connectivity offerings as well as verticalized IT solutions such as E-Health, Smart Cognitive Learning, Smart Energy, Industrial IoT and Cloud Applications.  With empowerment encoded in its corporate DNA, Globacom continues to initiate and implement people-oriented programmes and promotions that impact Nigerians allowing them to unleash their potentials and become unlimited.

At 20, Globacom utra high speed internet delivery is worthy of note . however, the telecom giant is certainly  ever ready for 5G, widely hyped as the next big thing in telecommunications industry with its compliant Band 28 channel and one can only wait with bated breath for the next magic from the grandmasters of data.