Globacom, telecommunications giant has said that wanton vandalisation of its equipment in various areas of the country was responsible for its poor performance in January this year.
This is coming as the telecom giant initiated moves to underpin its operations and check the activities of vandals
Globacom was reacting to the recent statistics released by the National Communications Commission (NCC), to the Information and Communications Ministry which showed that it had the highest rate of dropped calls for the month of January 2009, among GSM service operators in Nigeria. It had a dropped call rate of 1.76 percent, which fell within NCC’s minimum standard of dropped calls rate of two percent or less. 
Mr. Aremu Olajide, head of Network Operations, Globacom, said that the company suffered vandalization of it fibre optic ring in Aba which affected service delivery in South east, Uyo in Akwa Ibom state and Epe area of Lagos.
He added that Globacom also lost over 20 generators to theft between October 2008 and January this year.
Olajide explained that they had to deploy alternative transmission system to ensure that service delivery was not badly affected as repair work on the damaged fibre is expected to be completed in few weeks.
He also listed other issues the company faces on nearly a daily basis to include forced closure of cell sites by communities/miscreants, frequent fibre cut with 32 of such in February alone, very lengthy and frustrating processes with federal, states and local governments and multiple taxation across the different tiers of government.
Recalling Globacom’s major achievements last year, Olajide said what was most gratifying to the company was the reduction in customer complaints by 25% thereby reducing the time spent on complaints resolution.
“We also increased our interconnect capacity with all operators thereby reducing the occupancy to an average of 52% compared with above 75% in April 2008. We also upgraded our transmission capacity, completed our OFC from Port Harcourt to Eket to Uyo and Ibadan to Ife, opened 10 Gloworld shops across the country, replaced old generators and provision of at least two generators in all sites thereby reducing outage due to power by 20%, improved community relation thereby reducing downtime due to community, rolling out of 3G service, migration of BSC connectivity to fibre as primary route with microwave backbone as backup.
Meanwhile, telecommunications equipment vendor, Alcatel-Lucent has promised timely completion of the multi-million naira network improvement contract it signed with Globacom.
Speaking in Lagos at a media parley organized by Globacom, Mr. Peter Schubert, the general manager in charge of Globacom projects in Alcatel-Lucent, expressed the commitment of his company to the timely delivery of the key elements of the mega expansion project it recently signed to undertake for Globacom.
“It is a flagship project and when completed, the Glo network will be expanded and modernized. Alcatel-Lucent is committed to Globacom’s desire to provide excellent services for its subscribers not only in Nigeria but also in its other regions of operation in West Africa”, he added.
The projects, aimed at radically transforming service delivery on the Glo network, will see to the addition of at least 1500 Base Transceiver Stations (BTS) to its existing over 5000 BTSs across the country and an additional 25 Base Switching Centres in order to improve traffic on the network.
Also included in the multi-million dollar contract package are four New Generation Network (NGN) Mobile Switching Centres (MSCs), which installation will increase the network’s switching capacity from the present 30 million to 45million.
These will assist Globacom beyond mere voice communication, as it will significantly push up capacity for other value adding services such as upgrading the network’s Short Message Service Centre license from 400 messages per second to 600 messages per second. It will enhance Globacom’s 3G coverage in Lagos, Abuja and Port Harcourt as well as extend it to cover various other state capitals, while also increasing its GPRS capacity to 10 million data subscribers from the current 5 million.
Mr. Mike Jituboh, Globacom’s executive director, Special Projects, described the Globacom expansion project as the most ambitious expansion project by any telecommunication network in Nigeria, pledged the assurance of Globacom for excellent service delivery to its subscribers nationwide.
The media parley was rounded off with a visit to new switching centres and the Customer Care Centre where recent improvements have seen more hands employed to attend to over 70,000 inbound calls every day.