Accolades for Glo as ATCON unveils book on telecoms

Integrated telecommunications company, Globacom, received accolades for its pacesetting roles in the nation’s telecoms industry as the Association of Telecommunications Companies of Nigeria, ATCON, unveils a publication celebrating the heroes of telecommunications revolution in the country.

ATCON, at the ceremony held at the Lagos Oriental Hotel, Lekki, Lagos, paid glowing tributes to the Chairman of Globacom, Dr. Mike Adenuga Jnr., and the company for their role in the revolution that has led to tremendous growth and development of Nigeria’s telecoms industry.

At the occasion chaired by former Executive Vice Chairman, Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), Dr. Ernest Ndukwe, with the Minister of Communications Technology, Chief Adebayo Shittu, as a Special Guest of Honour, Globacom was, in the publication, recognised for aiding the growth of the sector which had seen the nation’s telephone lines grown from 400,000 lines to 162 million lines in a period of 15 years.

The giant telecommunications company, the publication further noted, had since inception pioneered a long list of innovations, which have led to the rapid development of Nigeria’s telecommunications sector and helped to fuel the company’s rapid growth and expansion.

Among such revolutions listed by the ATCON publication was Globacom’s pioneering billing system, per second billing, the first of its kind in the country when earlier networks said that was not practicable.

The publication recorded that the feat, accordingly, made it much easier for Nigerians to get value for money by paying only for the exact time spent on calls.

In addition to that, the book further documented the fact that Globacom crashed mobile acquisition and tariff from N20,000 and N50 per minute respectively to as low as N200 and 5 kobo per second, thus helping to aggressively boost telephone penetration in the country.

While also listing other early revolutionary products pioneered by Globacom in Nigeria such as Blackberry, vehicle tracking, mobile internet, mobile banking and multimedia messaging service (MMS), the publication equally recorded Globacom as the first and the only operator so far with a wholly-owned submarine cable, Glo-1, linking Europe and America to West Africa to ensure the availability of bandwidth to enterprise customers in West Africa.

The company was also the first to launch 4G-LTE network in 33 cities in Nigeria in 2016, just as it recently scored another first by introducing the novel concept of creating a dedicated path in its 4G LTE network for enterprise customers.

Globacom, it would be recalled, not long ago, flagged off the laying of Glo 2, the first submarine cable in Nigeria to terminate outside Lagos. This capital-intensive project is hoped to boost access to bandwidth in areas outside Lagos, especially the oil platforms and under-served communities in the southern parts of Nigeria.