GLO – 1 lands in Ghana
9/30/2009 2:29:04 PM -
The city of Accra on Tuesday berthed the world's first submarine optic fibre cable to be built by a single individual company, Globacom.
The historic moment, witnessed by the cream of Ghana media, has drawn wide praises for Globacom from within and outside the country.
Most journalist who were witnessing such moment the first time said it historic as it begins the pursuit of economic transformation for Africa.
The 9,800km long cable which stretched from the UK with dedicated extension to the US, spreads across all the West African countries was anchored to its landing station at Osu Ice Company Beach, Accra, Ghana.
The landing of Glo-1 in Ghana will also boost the operations of Glo Mobile Ghana, which is getting set for a nationwide roll-out.
The 640 gigabyte cable with optimum capacity of 2.5 terabyte will also be made available to other telecom operators who are keen to tap from the immense benefits of the huge bandwidth of Glo-1.
The fibre optic cable arrived in Nigeria on Saturday, September 5, 2009, pulled ashore at Alpha Beach, Lagos, Nigeria by officials of Globacom and Alcatel-Lucent, the world acclaimed leader in submarine cable technology.
The trend in the global telecommunication industry is for a consortium of companies or even nations to combine resources to build submarine cables as was the case with the SAT-3 cable which was built by a consortium of 36 countries.
Globacom Group Executive Director, Mr. Paddy Adenuga, said Glo-1 would deliver transmission capacity that would radically change Ghana and Africa's economic landscape by opening up the continent to the rest of the world.
Explaining the processes leading to the landing of the cable, the GED said that implementing submarine cable projects, particularly one spanning about 10,000 km from London through to Lagos and Accra is an initiative that usually takes between two to two and a half years to complete.
