Glo postpones date for launching

Glo Mobile Wednesday said although they are technically ready to launch in Ghana, they have to postpone the November 17, 2011 original launch date due to “some logistics issues beyond our control”.

It is widely believed that Glo’s arrival in Ghana is putting shivers down the spine of existing players who are keeping a close eye on the launch date, time and venue with the view to doing counter events to water down Glo’s launch.

Some journalists told Adom News they have had calls from some telecom operators asking if they had invites for the Glo launch, and seeking to know the exact time, and venue.

But Events and Special Promotions Director at Glo, Bode Opeseitan tells journalists the rescheduling of the launch date had nothing to do with competition, but was based on Glo’s own strategy.

He said “technically we are ready – you can receive call on our network now and no one wants to launch Glo more than we do but the decision to reschedule is strategic”.

Mr. Opeseitan did not however state whether the launch would still be this month or next.

But Mr. Opeseitan said over the last three years Glo had invested over US$600m in establishing a unique, seamless and world class network that would give Ghanaians the highest quality of service, particular in the wake of recent fines on telecom operators in Ghana for poor quality service.

He said Glo is ready to take on at least 10 million customers for starters and its network capacity is expandable.

“We have five switch centres, 18 Base Station Controllers, 1600 Base Transmitter Stations, 800 3.5G Cell sites, 2,850 Kilometres of fibre, 25 Glo World Shops across country, employed about 400 Ghanaians, and has a call centre that has the capacity to seat at least 600 people,” he said.

Mr. Opeseitan noted that apart from being the first network to launch on the back of a superior Glo One submarine fibre optic cable, Glo had also deployed next generation network (LTE), and was also launching at almost 100% nationwide coverage.

He noted that Glo had enjoyed tremendous support from the government, regulator, media and people of Ghana over the last three years and that gave them the confidence that even though they came in as the 6th operator, the would still make a significant and lasting impact on the market.

Testimony to that, a source within Glo said they did an in-house trial of the number reservation exercise but the code leaked and within a matter of hours almost 10,000 Ghanaians on other networks had reserved their numbers ahead of the official release of the code.

Globacom acquired its operating licence for business in Ghana in 2008 and during the past three years, has pursued a rigorous programme of developing a world class telecommunications service which emphasises reliability, efficiency and affordability for the majority of Ghanaians.