Glo signs $750 million deal with Huawei

Glo yesterday 25th of April signed a network upgrade equipment deal worth $750 million (about 118 billion naira) with Chinese tech company Huawei.

The contract, according to Glo, is aimed at making the network more resilient for better user-experience.

The Group Chief Operating Officer (GCOO) of Glo, Mohammed Jameel, speaking at the event said: “At the beginning of 2013, I made a commitment on behalf of the company that we will attach a lot of importance to our network because if customers do not enjoy the network, they cannot enjoy our products,”

Glo and Huawei officials

According to Mohammed, this upgrade process started by Globacom which is an ongoing process is in a bid to upgrade the network with the latest technology.

“We are upgrading every element of our network that provides services to consumers,”

“In the contract, new BTS, new microwave radio facilities, BSC will be upgraded to a latest one. It will also include back-hauling of the total network with most modern equipment.”

“We currently have 10 gigabytes of transport network but we are upgrading to 100 gigabytes so it can accommodate all the voice and data traffic for at least 10 years.”

In his words, vice president, West Africa, Huawei Technologies, David Fan said the contract will be a healthy one between the two companies.

“We find it a great honour to sign the contract. The two companies are similar. Glo is from Nigeria, which is an emerging market in Africa while Huawei is also from an emerging market in China.

“We are, therefore, pleased to receive the contract and by the time we finish the network upgrading, we would have also made Globacom network ready for long term evolution technology network. All they need to do is to obtain the license to provide services on the 4G network.”

Glo is the second biggest telecoms provider in Nigeria after MTN with a customer base of about 25 million and is owned by Nigerian billionaire, Mike Adenuga.

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