Globacom is inching towards becoming a formidable global brand in the provision of international services; putting on the cap of a truly carriers' carrier.

Its bouquet of offerings on the platform of its subsidiary company Glo Gateway, is swelling every other day and the icing on the cake ultimately comes early next year when its Glo-1 submarine cable network berths in Nigeria.

For a count, its international roaming, which offers services in 98 countries and 193 networks around the world now reach the United States, United Kingdom, France, Italy, Spain, Holland, Switzerland, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Greece, Singapore, Hong Kong, India, Denmark and Hungary. Other countries in the roaming agreement include Saudi Arabia, Syria, South Africa, Algeria, Cote d'Ivoire, Ethiopia, Egypt, Kenya, Uganda and Benin Republic

The introduction of GPRS (General Packet Radio Services) roaming facility by Glo Gateway enables Glo Mobile subscribers who travel abroad for business or leisure to browse the internet and send or receive picture messages on their Glo mobile phones.

National and international telecommunications depend on other networks to carry both their local and international communications traffic and few operators offer these services across the globe. One of the companies that provide such services include Globacom through its Glo Gateway network by which other telcos directly interconnect other leading international carrier service providers, provide quality hubbing service for other operators in the world and terminate and aggregate quality traffic directly from Nigeria to the rest of the world.

Currently the Glo gateway has direct interconnectivity arrangement with leading international carriers such as British Telecom, France Telecom, Belgacom of Belgium, Link Africa and KPN Eurovoice of Netherlands, France Telecom, IDT Global and Cable and Wireless of UK, iBasis of USA, T-Systems of Germany and Teleglobe of Canada.

Company officials say the Glo gateway vision is to deliver the highest quality, comprehensive and affordable international communications services in Africa by deploying best business practices and advanced communications infrastructure.

Globacom officials argue that its international switches offer better services because it provides interconnect on TDM or VoIP, has Point of Presence in multiple locations around the world focused towards winning traffic from across the globe and it carries out swift upgrades in capacity, thereby supporting operators avoid trunk congestion with 24/7 efficient technical support: constantly monitoring the network performance and call quality.

The operation is backed by four state-of-the-art Gateways in Nigeria which include two in Lagos, the commercial capital of Nigeria and one each in Abuja, the Federal Capital of Nigeria and Port Harcourt, the hub of petroleum industry Nigeria.

According to Globacom officials, the major benefit of this development for Nigerian telephone users is a substantial saving on international calls due to improved voice clarity and significant reduction in call delay.

Telephone users are afforded other benefits including the ability to make and receive quality international calls owing to direct interconnection with other carriers, reduction in delays and the elimination of distortions. These are made possible by the world class infrastructure deployed by the company. The dedicated circuits provided and managed by Globacom also ensure higher call completion rates.

Since 2004, Globacom has been involved in the development of its gateway and on completion of the phased deployment, Globacom will have gateway infrastructure and switches not only in Africa, Europe and America but also in Singapore and Hong Kong in Asia, United Arab Emirate in the Middle East and the Australian continent.

The bandwidth requirement of Nigeria and West Africa is increasing and is at present hardly met by the existing telecommunication infrastructure. The Glo-1 submarine cable will offer the African market the possibilities offered by broadband.

Glo-1 is being built by Alcatel Submarine Networks, which is the leading provider of cable infrastructure in the world. Glo-1 project will connect West Africa to UK on a 32 STM64 project cable capacity. Initially Glo-1 will have landing points in Lagos and Bonny in Nigeria, Bude in London and Lisbon in Portugal (planned). Glo-1 is also deploying 16 branching units to connect countries in West Africa.

The 9200 kilometre state-of-the-art cable will enable Globacom to have a clear distinction in providing quality services through multiple redundant and high quality direct links to various countries across the globe and will enable it to interconnect with several international networks and leading traffic carriers in the world.

The capacity of Glo-1 being deployed will fulfil the present and rapidly increasing high data requirement in the West African region.

The international calling card launched on May 09, 2005 enables telephone users to make international calls to over 135 countries with varied tariff ranging from N15/min to N50/min (excluding access charge) all on PMB.

The Glo Link international calling card is designed to address the frustrations of customers using other international calling cards in the market whose service is based on VoIP technology platform.

Officials argue that its calling cards provide better voice clarity and it eliminates delays, disturbances as it provides instant connectivity (one dial) to the destination with competitive rates as low as N 15 per minute to major destinations.