KUALA LUMPUR: Green Packet Bhd's flagship subsidiary Green Packet Global Holding Sdn Bhd (GP Global) will expand its international footprint to the Middle East and Africa markets, having been focused on Asian markets for the past 14 years.

GP Global chief executive officer Alvin Tan told the New Straits Times that this was part of its ultimate goal of being able to serve clients globally.

"We have identified growth and expansion teams beyond Asia who can provide our services in areas such as the Middle East and Africa (MEA) regions where demand for wholesale voice remains strong," Tan told the New Straits Times in an interview.

GP Global, formerly known as NGT Networks, is among the largest and fastest growing wholesale carriers of international voice and data traffic in Asia.

Tan also said GP Global's revenue had grown steadily in the past 14 years, now generating over RM500 million annually.

"NGT Networks managed to achieve break-even a year after it began its operations in 2007. Since then, we have maintained profitability for more than 12 years. Our revenue remains strong and has grown steadily in the past 14

years, generating over RM500 million a year."

Tan said in a rapidly moving world, GP Global would fulfil its promise in striving to address the needs of the market, while building the necessary relationships and partnerships which will ease the entry of new players into the Asian market.

As part of the Green Packet group, there would be strategic consolidation and alignment with all other business units to grow the group's footprint and expansion, he added.

"When we were known as NGT Networks, our business was focused on one product offering namely the provision of wholesale voice. Since our inception in 2007, we have been determined on becoming one of the leading wholesale voice providers in the region, which I believe we have successfully become," Tan said.

"As GP Global, we now represent Green Packet's presence within the telecommunication industry and its offerings under big data and Internet of everything. Our rebranding also marks a new beginning for GP Global as we expand our product offerings and geographical presence," he added.

The company is now developing its offerings within the wholesale short message service (SMS) market through the provision of application-to-person (A2P) messaging.

"This market is a growing sector due to increased demand from mobile internet users and the rapidly expanding international data sector. This concerted effort requires enhancing our internal capabilities and developing new hardware and systems which in turn allows us to build relevant offerings for our partners," he said.

However, Tan said its wholesale voice business was still the largest revenue contributor among the telecommunication services and remained as the company's bread-and-butter product in maintaining relationships and market share.

He said GP Global was diversifying its offerings under two main pillars namely the wholesale pillar and infrastructure provision pillar.

"Under wholesale, we will be offering A2P messaging (referred to earlier as SMS wholesale), wholesale data connectivity and data centre capacity. Under the infrastructure pillar, we are venturing into the hyperscale data centre and cloud services business.

"We believe that our comprehensive new offerings will meet the needs of modern day telcos. Our diversification is underpinned by our acquisition of new tools, increased manpower, the augmentation of group-wide digital solutions and changing consumer trends have validated our pivot," he added.