Brands We Love: Globacom

Ikenna Nwachukwu

3 years ago

Globacom is a Nigerian company that offers telecommunications services to customers in four countries—Nigeria, the Republic of Benin, Ghana, and Cote D’Ivoire. Its services include local and international voice calls, SMS, internet, and landlines for homes. The company was founded in 2003 by Mike Adenuga, who still owns it (it hasn’t gone public), and serves as its chairman. In the years since its establishment, it has achieved many firsts in the Nigerian telecommunications industry. One of those firsts was its introduction of per-second billing, which helped to drive down call rates, and drive competition in its industry. Another was its submarine cable, Glo-1, which was the first installed by a telecommunications company in Nigeria. The fibre-optic cable was built in 2011 and runs from the United Kingdom to Nigeria.

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Also in 2011, Glo became the first telecoms firm to introduce 4G-LTE, the fourth-generation mobile technology that guarantees faster network access for its users. Today, GLO (as it’s also known) has four business units. They are Glo mobile, its mobile voice call service; Glo Broad Access, its broadband internet product; Glo Gateway, a telephone service that has global coverage; and Glo 1. Globacom’s mobile services are available to a large number of individuals in Nigeria and elsewhere in Africa. As of September 2020, it had more than 54 million subscribers, making it the second-largest mobile telecoms operator in Nigeria. Data from the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) says that Globacom recorded substantial growth in the number of its internet users in 2020. The company’s internet user base crossed the 40 million mark that year. There are also voice and data, network, and digital solutions catering to organizations such as SMEs, corporates, and the public sectors.

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Starting in 2008, Globacom began expanding into countries outside of Nigeria, with the Republic of Benin being the first. It formally started operating in Ghana in 2012. It had extended its telecoms services to Cote D’Ivore in 2009. Thanks to its size and reach, Globacom has been able to sponsor numerous sporting and cultural events, and high-profile news TV programs. It has sponsored the Nigerian and Ghanaian football premier leagues, the CAF African Player of the Year Award, and the African Voices TV program on CNN. Globacom has won several awards for its services. In 2016, it won the Internet Company of the Year, Best GSM Company of the Year, and Enterprise Solutions Provider of the Year award at the Beacon of ICT Awards. In 2019, it won the Telecom Brand of the Year award at the World Branding Awards. And in 2020, it won the Brand Decade of the Year award at the Thisday Awards. Featured image source: Guardian Nigeria

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