At 20, Glo thinks powering Nigerians’ ambition

Globacom’s arrival into the scene in 2003 revolutionised telecommunication operations in Nigeria through its customer centric policies. It liberalised owning of a GSM line when it crashed the price of a sim, allowing many Nigerians to easily buy a sim. It did not stop at that, it introduced per second billings which players in the industry before then said was not doable. Before Glo came onboard every call was charged on per minutes even if the call was just for seconds.

So, celebrating 20 shows it has continued to keep the people at the centre of its activities. It was, therefore, not surprising that to mark its 20th anniversary, Glo hosted a get together for its stakeholders including its customers, which it dubbed ‘An Evening with Glo’.

For many who made it down to the venue, it was such unforgettable night with the closing energetic and electrifying performance from Asake, one of Glo ambassadors. Ensuring that Glo guests at the event had a memorable night before the coming on stage of Asake and Chike, who also added spike to the night and the venue was Godwin Komone, popularly called Gordons. He consistently dished out rib cracking jokes. This was no doubt complemented by performances from humour merchant, Arinze Baba, and tap dancers from South Africa, who added some international touch and colour of an all-round fun night for guests who filled the venue to the brim.

A further testimony that the company constantly makes its customers the centre of its action was the unveiling of the company’s new communication direction, “Powering Your Ambition”. The company used the night to tell its numerous stakeholders to expect more from it, showcasing its preparedness and capability to support businesses and individuals with the right tools and services to enable them set ambitious personal and business targets and realize them to the full.

Amid the jokes and laughter were speeches delivered by the Executive Vice Chairman of Globacom, Mrs. Bella Disu; the Chief Technical Officer, Mr Remi Makinde; Jumobi Mofe-Damijo, and Tega Agofure. All these speeches distilled the transition Glo has gone through over the years, it pioneering efforts in the industry and its new vision as it moves ahead. The speeches also provided some of its offerings that made it unique and customers’ centric.

Setting the tone of the mood of the night was Disu, who paid glowing tribute to Glo subscribers, partners, stakeholders and all those who have been with the company every step of the way for their support since inception, noting that stakeholders’ contributions have been essential to Globacom’s success stories over the past two decades, and its successes would be incomplete without them.

“This event is special for many reasons, one being that Globacom celebrated its 20th anniversary this past August. We’re incredibly proud of this feat, which symbolises two decades of our commitment to excellent service delivery, quality, innovation, and outstanding communication strategies. This remarkable journey and the heights we have reached are all thanks to the visionary leadership and tenacity of our founder and Chairman, Dr Mike Adenuga Jr.

“You’ll agree with me that the current pace of digital transformation is far quicker than what it was when Globacom started. What was once deemed impossible is now the norm. As a digital solutions provider, we embrace these unlimited opportunities to serve our customers by constantly investing in the latest tools and technology.

“Tonight, we are thrilled to unveil a new communication direction that focuses more on powering and driving ambition, while ensuring success for our existing and future customers. These creative campaigns will undoubtedly inspire accolades for our hardworking Marketing Communications team. They deserve it, but I’ll let you in on a secret – The creative genius steering us and whipping up most of these ideas is none other than the great guru himself, our Chairman, Dr Mike Adenuga Jr. I’m not sure he would have wanted me to share that, but after 20 years of his creative direction, I think it’s fair to let the cat out of the bag!

“Tonight, I’d also like to acknowledge those who have been with us every step of the way – Our dear partners and stakeholders – your contributions have been essential to Globacom’s success story over the past two decades, and our story would be incomplete without you.

“We are excited about the next 20 years of serving our customers by pre-empting and fulfilling their needs in ways that help them achieve their ambitions. We count on you all to be by our side as we write tomorrow’s success stories.”

Disu promised a memorable night when she said “ladies and gentlemen, we have a wonderful evening ahead”, which was delivered with the varied performance that left many not just standing but leaving their seat to dance on the stage.

Before the night of full fun, earlier in the day, Globacom hosted a press briefing, where it expressed its gratitude to its media stakeholders as well as provided some insights about its past, present and future plans.

Providing updates about some of its technical stuff aimed at better serving its customers, the firm’s Chief Technical Officer, Mr. Remi Makinde, said: “We are here to ensure that our customers have the best coverage. With the current challenge of energy globally, we are optimising our power systems nationwide on all our field stations to ensure that despite the global energy challenge in terms of diesel pricing and power supply, we are deploying green energy solutions.

“We have done a replacement of over 4,000 whole batteries to ensure that our sites don’t go down and our customers always have connectivity. Going into 2024, we would make sure the sites are always available to our customers.”

For fibre optic enhancement and expansion, Makinde disclosed that the plan is to complete over 286km of new fibre routes nationwide, adding that “ongoing, we have 736km of new fibre routes that we are laying pan Nigeria to ensure that broadband penetration is guaranteed and provided to all our teeming customers, both corporate and retailers. In the transport and transmission network, we have done with the IP backhaul which we upgraded from 300 gbps to 600 gbps”.

He also talked about how the company built Glo 1 – the international submarine cable directly connecting West Africa to the United Kingdom. He added that: “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. 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. 1262 new sites currently being rolled out Pan Nigeria to boost coverage and capacity demands.”

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 icing on the cake on the night for four stakeholders who came to celebrate with Glo at 20 was the return-trip all expenses paid business class trips to London that they won.