Ghana is poised to embrace a new milestone in the telecommunications industry with the launch today of Glo 1, the high-capacity submarine fibre-optic cable system built to carry data and internet traffic at high speed between Ghana/West Africa and the rest of the world.
The 9,800km long submarine cable network, the first project of its kind to be executed entirely by a single organisation, berthed on the beaches of Osu, in Accra.
The Glo 1 facility has been built with leading technologies backed by the rich expertise of Globacom and Alcatel-Lucent and is set to radically transform the country’s communications landscape and afford Ghanaian businesses new opportunities of bridging the digital gap between Ghana and the rest of the world.
Said Dr. Mike Adenuga Jnr, Chairman of Globacom Limited:
“These are exciting times indeed for Ghana and the rest of Africa, as Glo 1 comes in to offer immense opportunities for businesses across our continent and enable them to compete on an equal footing with their counterparts elsewhere in the world. Today, Glo 1 is here in Ghana to deliver transmission capacity which will radically change the country’s economic landscape and indeed, that of our sub-region.
‘’Glo 1 will usher in a new era of prosperity for Ghanaians as its benefits will impact rapidly on the transformation of education, manufacturing, agriculture, health, entertainment and commerce, fuelling the national economy as a whole towards higher productivity and wealth.
“Glo 1’s state-of-the-art infrastructure is designed to provide unprecedented high speed internet traffic with cost-effective voice, data, video and e-commerce services across Africa, Europe and the rest of the world. It will carry traffic for Globacom and any other operators intending to lease the service. It will ultimately make telecoms services in Ghana and the entire West African sub-region much faster, more reliable and cheaper for consumers”.
Glo 1 runs on a huge capacity, upgradable to up to 2.5 Terabytes per second. Glo 1 will touch three European countries, namely the United Kingdom, Spain and Portugal and 14 African countries including Ghana, with a dedicated link to the USA.
Glo 1 offers 99.9% uptime reliability, world-class long distance voice, video and data communication services to the African customer and caters for long-term bandwidth requirements for voice and data transmission across the West African sub-region.
The sheer capacity, efficiency and reliability of Glo 1 will stimulate Ghana’s communications industry and make it directly responsive to the demands of modern business practices and day-to-day lives – particularly in areas like telecommunication, telemedicine, teleconferencing, disaster management, E-learning, E-banking, Call Centres and the entertainment industry.
Said Philippe Dumont, President of Alcatel-Lucent Submarine Networks SAS:
“This submarine cable network enhances the overall telecommunications infrastructure of Globacom who have contributed to pioneering availability of high-speed Internet access and advanced communications services in Africa. This launch further enhances the successful cooperation we have established with Globacom since its inception.”
West Africa’s bandwidth providers have hitherto retailed bandwidth procured in bulk, which invariably is very expensive. Glo 1 will enable telecoms operators to offer quality services through multiple and high quality direct links to various countries across the globe and will enable such operators to inter-connect with several international networks and leading traffic carriers in the world. This would result in world class roaming experience for voice and data to subscribers on Glo Mobile and other networks as they travel overseas. Glo 1 will make bandwidth available to all telecom operators, carriers and corporations, connecting them through Globacom’s global partnerships to all the major information destinations of the world.
Glo 1 therefore introduces into the Ghanaian market not only a revolutionary telecommunications platform but a more reliable, high-speed internet service so far unmatched in the annals of the telecoms industry in the sub-region.
Note to Editors
Glo 1 is a subsidiary of Globacom Limited, an indigenous African telecommunications operator.
The Glo 1 infrastructure is a 9,800km long high-capacity international submarine fibre optic cable which runs from Bude in the United Kingdom with several landing stations between Europe and West Africa. These include Bude - UK, Vigo-Spain, Lisbon-Portugal, Casablanca-Morocco, Nouakchott-Mauritania, Dakar-Senegal, Pariah-Cape Verde, Banjul-Gambia, Conakry-Guinea, Freetown-Sierra Leone, Monrovia-Liberia, Abidjan-la Cote d’ Ivoire, Accra-Ghana, Lome-Togo, Cotonou-Benin and Lagos in Nigeria. This contract, as well as other contract for its optical/IP backbone and wireless networks) - all valued at over $1 Billion contract, was awarded to telecommunication vendor, Alcatel-Lucent, world leaders in submarine cable networks.
Alcatel-Lucent has also partnered Globacom to provide submarine cable connectivity from the United Kingdom to New York which connects Ghana to North America to provide crystal clear voice calls and high speed data/Internet transmission services to the two major data hubs of the world.

Glo is building a world-class telecommunications infrastructure throughout Ghana to support Globacom’s drive to roll out the best mobile service in the country in terms of network quality, cost and speed of service when it launches later this year.
Globacom is owned by Dr Mike Adenuga Jnr. CON (Commander of the Order of the Niger).