Glo marks 100 days anniversary in Ghana with a promise to make the next six months more eventful and exciting for Ghanaians.
In a 100th Day anniversary message copied exclusively to Adom News Editor Nii Narku Dowuona, Board Member and Executive Director, Human Resource at Globacom, Adewale Sangowawa said “Ghana is a challenging market but we are making progress - we are happy with the response we are getting from the people of Ghana.”
He said Glo is pleased that its offers are resonating with the people of Ghana and that it is influencing existing market dynamics, adding “as we promised, we have a lot more in store and we are working towards making the next six months even more eventful and exciting for everybody in Ghana.”
Glo Mobile launched commercial service in Ghana on April 29, 2012 and Tuesday August 7, 2012 was exactly 100 days since it started operations in country.
One hundred (100) days is an important anniversary for every business because it is a widely accepted initial stock-taking benchmark, and Glo has chalked some successes over the period.
Within the first 31 days of its first 100 days, Glo Ghana raked in 468,508 customers, representing 2% mobile market share, and within the second 31 days, it more than doubled subscriber base to 990,566, which gives it an impressive 4.2% market share in just two months.
Glo’s 62-day market share makes it more than four times larger than the only CDMA player, Expresso, which has been in the country for more than a decade.
The Half-year Mobile Subscriber Base Report from the National Communication Authority (NCA) indicate Glo is also gradually chipping off some of the market shares of each of the four GSM players, MTN, Vodafone, Tigo and Airtel.
The NCA report shows that as Glo gain 4.2% market share, MTN lost some 1%, Airtel lost 0.5%, while Tigo and Vodafone lost 0.2% each.
This confirms fears previously expressed by the bosses of those four telcos that the sixth operator (Glo) threatens to neutralize market share and revenue across board.
Meanwhile, based on the rate of its monthly subscriber base growth, it is projected that within the month of July, through to its 100th day, August 7, 2012, Glo may have added on another estimated 500,000 customers to reach almost 1.5 million customers.
But that could only be confirmed when the NCA publish the third quarter subscriber base report, which would capture the July figures.
Glo took off on the bark an estimated $750 million ‘world class and state-of-the-art’ network infrastructure, which made it the first telco in Ghana to take off with 1,400 BTSs spread across 974 cities and 10,000 villages, providing an unprecedented 85% coverage at its launch, and 2,900km terrestrial fibre spread into Ghana, from it privately-owned 2.5terabit/sec Glo One undersea fibre.
It announced at the launch that it has enough capacity to take on 10 million customers without congestion.
On the back of that massive infrastructure, and a lot of good will from Ghanaians, Glo begun commercial service in Ghana with some of the juiciest offers on the Ghanaian market, including 20Gp free everyday for the first 100 days on Glo, 100% bonus on every recharge, 2Gp per minute of call to one Special Number of the customer’s choice, one minute bonus for every three minutes of call received on Glo, five hours free night calls, as well as News, Sports, Entertainment and Weather updates on Glo’s 128Kb SIM.
Glo’s 100 days ride on the Ghanaian market has obviously been impressive in terms of subscriber base, but it recently experienced a few challenges on with data service.
The network experienced days of disruption both in Ghana and in Nigeria and customers in Ghana flooded their facebook pages with complaints about the interruption.
A cross-section of the media in Nigeria reported that the interruption was due to a cut on the Glo One submarine cable off the coast of Nigeria, which has since been repaired.
Meanwhile, Adom News has been speaking with some Ghanaians about their experiences and impressions about Glo over the past 100 days in Ghana.
Some of the respondents say they are impressed with Glo’s performance in terms of market share gain, and even though the service has not been exactly up to scratch, they are confident Glo is on the path to reaching an impressive quality of service in the near future.
Glo customers said they are also impressed with the 20Gp free airtime every day for the first 100 days, and one, Isaac Assan customer said he even got GHC20 free when he bought his Glo SIM card, and it lasted for a long period because he dedicated the line to calling other Glo numbers, which is cheaper (8Gp per minute).
Another customer, Solace Fefeti said she has reserved the Glo line for calling Glo numbers only because it is affordable, and it is not her main phone line yet.
Some mentioned that call drops on the Glo network is worrying but understandable, given that even customers of networks that have been in country for years still experience call drops, speech mutation, wrong voice prompts and other aged-old challenges.
One customer wrote on his facebook wall that the Glo tower in his vicinity, at Nyanyano in Accra, has no antennae so they depend on the cell site in nearby Kasoa, which results in occasional service interruption in the that area; but he was hopeful that the service would get better once they get an antenna at Nyanyano.
Some customers also had concerns with the delays in the activation of numbers reserved and the difficulty in reaching Glo customer service for help during the first 100 days.
They expressed the hope that as the Glo network gets fully augmented, turnaround time for SIM activation, as well as customer service would improve.
Glo officials have assured Ghanaians that its network, like every other telecom network in its initial stages, is still undergoing augmentation, adding that when it is fully augmented, it would deliver even better quality and customer experience than it is doing now.
As promised by Mr. Sangowawa, Adom News can confirm that Glo is gearing up for the series of promotions, activations and events it promised at the launch 100 days ago, where its 17 Glo Ghana Ambassadors would be staging performances and be making public appearances at Glo Festivals and other events.
Glo got the license as the sixth Mobile Operator in Ghana in August 2008, and finally launched in April 2012.
Prior to the launch of commercial service, Glo gave Ghanaians the opportunity to reserve special 0233 and 0235 Glo numbers, and at least 1.5million Ghanaians did, which is the highest any such exercise had recorded in Ghana so far.
But long before that, Glo had entered Ghana on a note that hits the core of the country’s passion – football. Glo started off way back in 2008 as the headline sponsor of Ghana’s Premier League in the amount of US$3.5million, and later went in further as Headline sponsors of the senior national team, The Black Stars with another US$1.5million.
It is also important to note that within the first 100 days, Glo has changed its original Chief Operating Officer (COO), for Ghana, George Andah, and replaced him with Mr. Patrick Awotwi, who is now Glo Ghana Boss, but with a different title, Head of Ghana Business. George Andah has moved on to be West African Regional Director for Marketing Operations.
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