Globacom winds up on national rollout

Globacom is winding up works on its buildout of fibre
optic ring to service the massive unmet demand in
Africa’s most populous country of 130 (less
conservative figure is 150) million people. Nigeria
geographic size is about 957,000 square kilometres.

Since it opened its mobile window (Glomobile) last
year to join the highly competitive Nigerian mobile
market, Globacom has unloaded over 1.9 million mobile
lines into the network. In 12 months of joining the
fray, it has been able to overtake government owned
M-Tel but still trailing behind Vmobile and MTN, which
still leads with close to three million active
subscribers.

Now, Globacom seems poised to begin a major onslaught
against first national operator Nitel in the carriers’
market and attract to itself considerable traffic of
other operators which Nitel has failed to carry.

The public telco has been undergoing series of
management travails that has affected its ability to
play in the market. A management contract with the
Dutch Pentascope to manage Nitel for three years has
not been able to fly without attack and the telco has
in the last few months lost more grounds in a market
where new players are taking the shine off it.

Globacom is set to be Nitel’s nemesis with a national
network buildout contract with Siemens and Alcatel
nearing completion. The fibre optic cabling from Kano
to Abuja has been completed and test transmission has
started, Globacom officials told journalists on a
nation wide tour of the telco’s network. That of Lagos
and Ibadan is set to be ignited for use. [Details
Monday 29, November 2004]
 

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