Gateway Nigeria has since its inception in 1994, provided backbone for businesses in Nigeria, enabling them gain high speed internet access.
Initially known as GS Telecom Nigeria, it was rechristened Gateway Nigeria in 2007 after a buy-over, and is today owned by telecom giant Vodacom SA, with effect from 28th December, 2008.
John Dindlebeck, MD, Gateway Nigeria told Nigeria CommunicationsWeek that the company was providing VSAT service called Biznet1, to the oil companies. This was owned by the 5 major oil companies but was operated and maintained by GS Telecom. In 1995, following the huge success of Biznet1, Biznet2 was launched and this was owned by 4 oil companies.
“At the time, satellite service was very expensive and therefore other organizations without the deep pockets of the oil companies could not afford this. In 1998, we applied and got national and international VSAT license for 10 years.”
“However, with technological advancement came cheaper connectivity solutions and in 1999, the Central Bank of Nigeria contracted us to connect their state offices to the new headquarters in Abuja. And thus began the proliferation of VSAT services to the banking sector. We provided more customer-owned networks and at the time were more of a systems integrator,” said Dindlebeck.
He stated that by 2000, the company evolved from a systems integrator to an engineering house when they launched their Frame Relay service and by 2003, had points-of-presence (PoP) in 25 cities in Nigeria.
“Of the 25 PoPs; 3 in Lagos, Abuja and Port-Harcourt were both national and international gateways, which meant that we could not only do in-country connectivity, but could also, leveraging on strategic alliances with international service providers, provide international leased circuits, VPN services and high capacity internet services.”
“Some of the PoPs were owned and managed by us, but some were at our client’s locations from where we provided service to other clients,” he added.
“With the advent of the GSM companies in 2001, we became a carrier’s carrier, providing MSC and BTS backhaul services for both national and international voice traffic, which was about 75% of our business at that time. Today, a carrier service is only 25% of our business against 75% of business services.”
“Moving with technology, in 2004, we purchased an iDirect-powered hub and again evolved to a network owner and operator. Today, we have 3 hubs in Lagos and 1 in Washington (for Internet services) with over 1,500 remote sites, all C-band high quality connections,” said the Gateway Nigeria boss.
Gateway has offices in Ghana, Cote D’Ivoire, Cameroun, and South Africa, and with presence in 32 of the 50 African countries, has a huge customer-base in the continent.