body-container-line-1

Glo storms Ghana's telecom market with juicy offers

By myjoyonline
Business & Finance Ambassador Kabral Blay-Amihere fourth from left offically opened the Glo Network to mark the launch of commercial service in Ghana and some Glo ambassadors and officials, including Glo Ghana COO, George Andah second from right looked on
APR 30, 2012 LISTEN
Ambassador Kabral Blay-Amihere (fourth from left) offically opened the Glo Network to mark the launch of commercial service in Ghana and some Glo ambassadors and officials, including Glo Ghana COO, George Andah (second from right) looked on

Beginning from Monday, April 30, 2012, all 1.5 million Ghanaians who successfully reserved 023-3 and 023-5 Glo numbers can go to any of the 25 GloWorld Shops across the country and activate them and start making calls.

This is possible because the Glo Ghana network has now been activated and the first official call was made on the network between National Media Commission (NMC) Chairman, Ambassador Kabral Blay-Amihere, and Globacom Executive Director for Human Resource, Adewale Sangowawa at a press launch of Glo Ghana's commercial services.

But due to SIM registration procedures, new Glo customers might have to wait for a while for their registration particulars to be verified and validated before their Glo SIM could be activated.

Glo's launch on Sunday brought a three-year long wait to an end, and it came only after the National Communication Authority (NCA) had fined Glo $200,000 for failure to launch and cover at least six regions in the country within two years of its license, which was in 2008.

But Glo Ghana Chief Operating Officer (COO), George Andah told journalists the long wait was not a waste because for every extra day Ghanaians waited, Glo was planning and working on relevant packages and offerings that would excite Ghanaians.

Evidence of that was the company starting with 85% coverage of Ghana, providing services in 974 cities and 10,000 villages, and also starting with some of the juiciest offers the industry could offer.

For starters, all new customers on Glo would get 20Gp credit free everyday for the first 100 days they joined Glo, and George Andah said that was about three minutes of call free on Glo for 100 days just for being a customer.

He said beside the free 20Gp every day, new customers also would get up to 100% bonus on every recharge, five hours free night calls for spending just 10Gp in a whole day, one minute bonus to call any network for every three minutes of calls received, and one special phone number (Sweet Number) that a customer could call for only 2Gp per minute.

“Glo SIM cost only GHS1 and a call per minute on Glo is 8Gp but with 100% bonus on every recharge the effective call tariff is way less than 8Gp,” Andah said.

The company also assured Ghanaians of the most competitive international call rates, not much different from domestic call tariffs.

There were other offers that enabled customers to have the latest news, sports, entertainment and weather updates on their Glo 128kb SIM cards, whiles a service called Sharp-Sharp also allowed electronic tranfer of credit on the go.

George Andah said those offers came on the back of Glo's superior $750 million-worth world class network comprising 1,400 BTS, the popular 2.5 terabit/sec Glo One submarine cable, with some 2,900km terrestrial spread into Ghana, which also made 80% of Glo BTSs 3G (UMTS.

He noted that 1.5 million people had already reserved their special Glo numbers on a network that was ready to accommodate at least 10 million customers for starters, “which means one out of every two Ghanaian can be on the Glo network without it getting congested.”

The Glo Ghana boss said with the superior infrastructure Glo had installed, it could assure Ghanaians of the fastest upload and download internet speeds in country, and the best quality voice calls from everywhere on the soils of Ghana.

“We are starting with 1,400 BTS which makes us the second biggest network in the country in terms of coverage but the rate at which we are going, we would reach 2,300 BTS by the close of 2012 and that will make Glo the largest network in terms of coverage in Ghana,” he said.

He said the company had already seated 500 Customer Care staff at the 25 GloWorld Stores, who are ready to receive over 200,000 calls in a day serving customers' various needs.




Mr. Andah assured Ghanaians that Glo Ghana would leverage on the success story of Glo in Nigeria and Benin, where it was the last to enter those markets but had led a greater chunk of the innovation in the industry in both countries.

He expressed special gratitude to President John Evans Ata Mills “whose Presidential Proclamation and help substantially removed some of the stumbling blocks we had encountered in the process of rolling out this network.”

Ambassador Blay-Amihere, who presided and turned the key to activate the Glo Ghana network, expressed the hope that Glo's arrival would add value to the telecom landscape.

He said Ghana was moving towards where everyone required quality service and Glo could only survive in the market if it could assure Ghanaians of quality of service and value for money.

The launch did not go down without some very catchy television commercials involving all of Glo Ghana's ambassadors, who also closed the show with a special Glo song they had recorded.

Some of the ambassadors expressed joy about the fact that Glo's launch released them into action as many shows and festival had been planned for them to perform, and others encouraged their fans to switch to Glo.


Story by Samuel Nii Narku Dowuona/Adom News/Ghana

body-container-line