Our competitive advantage – GWAL boss

Managing Director and chief executive officer, GlobalTouch West African Limited (GWAL), Mr. Isaiah Abdulai Mohammed, has said that his firm has competitive advantage over other telecommunications services providers in the country.

Speaking at a recent chat with media in Kaduna, Mohammed said, it is now clear that with the GlobalTouch pioneering spirit as the nation’s Global Mobile Personal Communications by Satellite (GMPCS) licensee.

“It is clear that GlobalTouch’s GMPCS services have strategic advantages over other telecom services providers,” he declared.

Mohammed enumerated some of these rare advantages to include that GWAL service has the universal coverage merit, which is beyond the Global System for Mobile communications (GSM) coverage; involvement of one-off capital outlay in covering a large space of land, hence extending to the entire Nigeria’s land mass and West African countries.

“This is unlike other telecoms operators that rely on continues construction of base stations in covering the whole nation, thus, our services are cheaper,” he said.

Apart from its ability to operate virtually everywhere, he also explained that GMPCS has exceptional clarity of voice due to the nature of technology deployed to facilitate better voice quality cellular networks and greater system capacity.

“Comprehensive and vast usage data solutions for corporate users, asset tracking, data monitoring, no matter the location via satellite, unlike the GSM service providers who rely solely on base stations,” he said.

Stressing that with GlobalTouch, there would be more reliable services delivery, superior technology, no drop voice or data calls to name a few.

“Consumers will get value for their money, ensuring consumer satisfaction,” he asserted.

One of the unique services of GWAL is the assets tracking technology, which affords customers on the network to use the satellite modems and integrated back office management solution to track mobile assets such as aircraft, vehicles, trailers, cargo containers and maritime assets.

Meanwhile, GWAL has set date for its commercial roll out on or before April, 2009.
This is coming as the management of GWAL, has announced it voted the sum of $10 million (about N1,330,000,000 billion) to facilitate the take off of its satellite gateway project initiative located near Kaduna.

GWAL is partnering in this whole project with a United States-based world’s largest provider of mobile satellite voice and data services, Globalstar.

Founded in 1997, GlobalTouch, is a Nigerian company with 70 per cent investment equity, while its partners, Globalstar has 30 per cent.

“Our satellite gateway is under construction as you have seen in Kaduna to provide services to Nigeria and neighbouring West African countries as well as parts of the coastal Atlantic and Gulf of Guinea maritime region. We hope to commence commercial service in April 2009,” Mohammed said.

Affirming this, management consultant to GWAL, Mr. Peter Beacon, said that Globalstar with head office in Silicon Valley, also has corporate offices in Canada, Ireland, Panama and Brazil.

He said that the telco has shifted from a wholesale business model, to offering of mobile satellite voice and data services to over 329,000 commercial and consumer subscribers in over 120 countries globally.

Mr. Beacon also said that Globalstar’s Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite architecture is well positioned to meet the growing demand for global satellite voice and data.

“Globalstar operates a constellation of 48 operational low-earth-orbit (LEO) satellites at approximately 1414 kilometres (km), while it has Geostationary satellites orbit at approximately 32,000 Km.

“LEO is a global constellation of multiple satellites, while each GEO or Geostationary satellite covers a specific region of the earth’s surface,” he said, enumerating the advantages to include that Globalstar spectrum holdings are global, customers in over 120 countries, with virtually no latency and lower power requirements for handsets and data terminals.

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