Globacom has announced its intention to cut down on telecom tariff in September this year, following the landing of its Glo One Submarine cable into Nigeria from London.

Fielding questions from journalists in Lagos at the weekend during a media parley organised by the company, its Head of Network Operations, Mr. Aremu Olajide, said the planned reduction in tariff would not in anyway compromise on quality of service.

According to him, "the Glo One Submarine cable will increase availability and access to bandwidth, and this will cut down the cost of a single bandwidth from its current $72, 000 to about $7, 200."

He added that in September, the use of satellite transmission would be a thing of the past, since Globacom would flood the Nigerian market with cheap but quality bandwidth for better quality of data and voice transmission.

Speaking on the issues surrounding landing of Glo Submarine cable in some West Africa countries, Aremu said it was no issue since Globacom owns the project alone and would decide on any terms of agreement between it and interested neighbouring countries.

Some West African countries where demanding for co-ownership of the Glo One submarine cable project if it has to land first in their countries before landing in Nigeria.

According to Aremu, the issue had been concluded and Globacom was going ahead with its submarine project undisturbed.

"When we say we are crashing price, we mean it with all sincerity because we have done it before when we rolled out our services in August 29, 2003, with per second billing, which eventually turned out to crash telecom tariff, after existing operators said it was not possible to introduce per second billing system on a network that was barely two years old in operation," Aremu said.

Explaining the state of its fibre optic cable laying across the country, Aremu said Globacom had laid self-healing fibre connecting Lagos, Ijebu-Ode, Benin, Port Harcourt, Owerri, Eket, up to Abuja. The introduction of self-healing ring, he added, would enable continuous transmission, even when there is a cut on the cable from any part of the country, he said.