When Globacom launched its mobile service on August 29, 2003, its most visible disruption was on the phone screen.
Glo Mobile charged one kobo per second from its first day, challenging incumbent operators that were billing customers as much as N50 per minute and had previously argued that per-second billing was technically unfeasible.
But the more consequential gamble by Mike Adenuga was not the price war. It was what came next: a decision to build the infrastructure that would allow his young telecom company to control more of the journey between a Nigerian subscriber and the rest of the world.
Read also: Glo turns airtime lending into customer retention strategy with new borrowing features
That bet eventually produced Glo-1, a 9,800-kilometre submarine cable stretching from Bude in the United Kingdom to Lagos and connecting into West Africa. The cable landed at Alfa Beach in Lagos in September 2009 and was commercially activated in October 2010. It was designed with an initial capacity that was later upgraded to 2.5 terabits per second.
