Twenty six heavy-lifting aeroplanes have landed in Nigeria over the last ten months to deliver equipment for network upgrade underway at Globacom, the Second National Operator says, ahead of its 5G rollout this year.
Globacom and owners of the Glo Mobile mobile telephony business this month announced a roadmap to drive the future of the vibrant telecoms sector.
Under the plan, Globacom says it will execute a “conceptual launch” of 5G in 700mhz band for Internet of Things application this year.
Sanjib Roy, Globacom’s Group Technical Director, who announced this at a meeting with media executives in Lagos says the transformation underway at the telecoms giant will see the introduction of new data analytics tools to capture subscribers’ real time experience.
Globacom has extensively invested in network upgrades, including swapping of legacy facilities. Roy says outlining the company’s plan to “have its best year ever in terms of quality of service, data speed and capacity expansion.”
According to the Globacom Technical Director, the last ten months have witnessed the landing of about 26 freight aircraft from around the world, bringing tonnes of network equipment into the country for the Nigerian SNO.
Roy says that the equipment helped Globacom to build a brand-new network with superior quality and higher capacity. “Activation is looking up, traffic into the network is going up and consumption is up.”
Roy says that, “a new e-band microwave radio technology has been deployed, resulting in increase in backhaul bandwidth to 1.5 – 2gb per link. More than 1800 BTS and equal number of NodeBs have been swapped in Lagos, Oyo, Ogun and Rivers states. Also, supplied and deployed are 1000 microwaves to modernise the transmission network to IP. The capacity of Glo 1, Globacom’s submarine cable, has been upgraded to 300G, giving huge bandwidth for mobile and Enterprise business,” he adds.
“All these have been possible because of quick supply and effective deployment. We have also deployed more than 2000 new generators and 6000 new batteries to boost customer experience. Work is on-going on more than 1000km of fibre routes where road construction had affected fibre cabling,” he adds.
Roy said deployment of high wattage Radio Remote Units (RRU) for 3G services and multi-sector antenna had been concluded for better 3G indoor coverage, high speed data download, signal quality and network coverage.
Globacom is also upgrading the capacity of existing microwave links, converting TDM links to IP for 2G and 3G, and is deploying high capacity microwave back up links to increase data back haul capacity and protect traffic against fibre cut.
Roy disclosed that, in 2019, Globacom, owned by Dr. Mike Adenuga, who is rated by Forbes as world’s 2nd richest black man, is planning for a bigger and better future.
“We are using a scientific and methodical way of rolling out new sites based on feedback from regions on where the sites are needed to address customer complaints. We are also planning to rollout LTE in 1800 band this year in major cities to increase our 4G LTE penetration and allow higher handset adoption in order to enable the masses to harness the future. New enterprise products that will help SMEs and businesses in rural areas to grow in a digital environment are also in the works. New sites will also be built in rural areas to bridge the digital divide between cities and villages,” Roy adds.
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