How Glo rescued Nigerians and gained a foothold

When I initially thought of writing this post, I didn’t know that Globacom just celebrated its tenth year anniversary of operations in Nigeria.

The special thing is not that it celebrated ten years but unlike MTN, Airtel and Etisalat, Glo is a Nigerian company which is owned by billionaire businessman Mike Adenuga.

Glo started operations in Nigeria on the 29th of August, 2003. In less than a year, Globacom became the fastest growing telecoms company after reaching its target of 1 million customers in a year with 3 months to spare.

Prior to the beginning of Globacom’s operations, MTN, Mtel (which is no more in existence) and Airtel (which was Econet then and has changed names countless times before airtel) were already in the new Nigerian telecommunications market.

Today, Globacom has gone to become the second biggest telecommunications company in Nigeria with a customer base of over 25 million people.

Now, someone may be wondering how Glo rescued Nigerians where there were already three (one is no more in existence) telecoms companies before Glo entered the market.

When the mobile phone telecommunications companies first came into Nigeria about more than a decade ago, it was a status symbol to have a cellphone and a working line then.

The lowest feature phones (without colour screens and camera) were as expensive as 20,000 naira and you had to buy a SIM card which was as expensive as 15,000 naira for the early users.

Imagine how expensive it was to own a mobile phone then. After all these, call rates were in per minute plans which means customers are not charged correctly for the amount of time they use on calls.

This is where Glo made its first impact. Glo was the first telecommunications company in Nigeria to introduce the per second billing plan. This drove the amount people spent on calls down from as high as 50 naira in a minute to as low as 15 naira in recent times.

You will also spend less than the 15 naira if you use less than a minute, an option which was not available before.

Very soon, the price of SIM cards started falling and today, you can get some SIM cards free. Glo was also at the centre of this after it began selling SIM cards for a considerably cheaper price than other operators.

Glo has also become the first telecommunications company to lay a submarine cable, Glo-1 (a 9,800km long cable) into Nigeria from the United Kingdom. This is in a bid to improve its range of services to Nigerians. Glo was the first individual African company to embark on such a project.

Presently, Glo has the largest roaming for voice and data in Africa with connection to 72 networks in 29 countries.

Glo has since started operations in Benin Republic and Ghana and has also obtained a license in Ivory Coast. Indeed, the giant telecommunications company is really making progress on its aim to be the biggest and best African telecommunications network.

The issue young people used to have with Glo is the ease of internet connectivity and I think that may have been settled with recent tariff plans like the Glo Bounce that gives data on recharge.

Thanks to Glo which has been unlimited and more grease to Mike Adenuga’s elbows for the initiative to make life easier for Nigerians.

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Posted in Specials, Telecoms