The Glass Tower

After more searching we finally found a fully furnished office in The Glass Tower, based near Teen Talwar in Clifton. On the 10^th of March 2007 the lease was signed and I finally had an office.

The only thing the office needed was computers and an internet connection and we were good to go.

The next hurdle I faced was setting up an internet connection in the office. Now its not as easy as it is in the UK, make a phone call and all is kushty and we still complain. I got some advice from my cousins and decided to go ahead with a company called World Online. Although there were 4 phone lines in the office only one was capable of handling an ADSL connection. So I got all the papers together and had to get a paper signed by the landlord to go ahead with the connection. It required a bit of running around and suddenly that one phone call felt like nothing. A few days later I got a reply from World Online, and was told that that specific line was already booked with another ISP (Internet Service Provider).

Ok for those of you confused, this basically means that the phone line was in use by the previous tenants with another ISP by the name of Multinet. Now the way the system works is you have to submit all papers required to the ISP, the ISP then puts in an application to PTCL, Pakistan’s Landline Phone service to get them to convert the line into an ADSL line. So what happened is World Online has submitted the application to PTCL and PTCL have come back and said that this line was already converted by Multinet.

So now I had 2 options, either I get a line clearance form from Multinet, which I tried but they sent me on a cat and mouse chase OR I get a connection with Multinet. So Multinet offered to match World Online’s offer, and I caved in and agreed. It took quite a while to get all the papers together and submitted, then it took a further 3 weeks for the technicians to arrive to the office, once they arrived it took all day to get the line sorted and at the end I was informed that the signal is too weak and its not possible to get a connection here.

So I got angry with Multinet and was told it will take 2 weeks to get a clearance letter for the line, so no messing around I went straight to the top and forced them to give me a letter within 3 days. I visited them twice and finally got the letter.

Now I was stuck. Multinet had informed me that it was impossible to get a connection in this office and the only other option was a cable connection, the problem with that is there are no cable lines running through that area. It was my mistake to take their word for it, and started to consider other options.