Osama A.

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PTCL has recently started offering Fibre-to-the-curb phone connections, which have much clearer voice quality than their copper counterparts (although they do have a familiar voice-in-a-barrel effect that you sometimes get over VoIP connections).

Whats more interesting is that they have exclusive rights - or a monopoly status - to offer DSL broadband services on those connections. Simply put, if you get a PTCL fibre connection you cant get DSL from anyone else except PTCL.

Personally I dont mind though, because PTCL broadband is cost effective, fast and responsive…. just as long as it keeps working and you dont have to deal with their customer service.

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13 additional thoughts for this post.

  1. Faisal Naik Said:

    Yes, I myself got this in Islamabad, since the distance between my place and exchange exceeded the DSL requirement. I asked for a connection on Fibre ONU and got the DSL through on it.

    DSL speed is decent.

    But i have noticed one thing; inbound calls dont get through during evening or night time.. Does it mean limited channel capacity?? This has forced me to keep the older PTSN line intact which has the Pakistan Pkg activated on it

  2. ujmi Said:

    Faisal its an interesting piece of thing you just shared with us.

    My office is also around 6 KM away from the exchange (imagine that in Islamabad!) and as DSL is recommended for within 5 KM radius we get pretty crappy internet connectivity. I tried Link Dot Net at office with a 2 MB connectivity, but was offered a 1 MB instead and that too got reduced to 512 KB connectivity as Link Dot Net says my line cannot support that much speed!

    I guess I will get another PTCL fiber line and try PTCL broadband on it. Btw do they charge extra for Customer Premises Equipment for Fiber or is included in the price?

  3. Faisal Naik Said:

    Phew, link.net people are one of the worst people to deal with.

    (http://faisalnaik75.wordpress.com/2008/05/27/how-not-to-get-stuck-with-linkdotnet-marketing-tactics/)

    The modem (CPE) is connected to a regular copper line which in-turn is jumpered to a nearby ONU in my area. CPE is therefore free of cost and PTCL only charges for the service.

  4. awahid Said:

    I would like to mention the customer support of the PTCL over here…
    I had applied for the land line number year ago but still nothing from PTCL…
    I call the line man [use traditional ways ;)] but still no luck

    All I know is the poll in our street is filled and they cannot do anything about it.

  5. Monocoque Said:

    When everything else fails.

    Complaint Checklist:
    1. Complain to PTA, its division heads
    2. CC to Wateen CEO
    3. CC to Wateen’s parent company CEO
    4. CC to Global head of Int’l Parent company
    5. Forward to news papers and tech magazines
    6. Forward to prominent bloggers

  6. ujmi Said:

    Mococoque,

    Where did Wateen come from?

  7. Monocoque Said:

    The Abu Dhabi Group.

    http://www.wateen.com/OurGroup.aspx

  8. Monocoque Said:

    Wrong window, must take a break :D

  9. Monocoque Said:

    I got this connection a year ago but didn’t know. When I contact Maxcom DSL few months ago they said you have fiber number and we can’t provide you DSL, same for other providers, so I had to continue with PTCL DSL.

    Now PTCL DSL is behaving good and I have no problems with this line. I am yet to come across voice coming from barrel effect, which I rarely get on Skype. I live 50 meters from area exchange.

    Things are better than few years ago when had to run for dialup cards :D

    - Ex-disgruntled PTCL customer

  10. Walid Janjua Said:

    I have been using the fiber service from PTCL for around 4 months now. It works like a charm. They have installed ONU’s throughout the city (Islamabad, Rawalpindi) and they are giving most new connections over ONU’s wherever possible. Since my ONU is barely 50 meters from my house, the service is pretty good.

    I have the 1MB connection, download speed is decent. Good for my requirements. Normally get around 95k to 107k.. Mostly hovers around 100k.

  11. Walid Janjua Said:

    and forgot to mention something,

    Initially i signed up for DSL over my regular copper connection. It dint even work. After a month of filing daily complaints, they shifted me to the ONU. I had to have my number changed which i had had for the past 15+ years. Since i had the line changed, i had no problems what so ever.. Past 4 months .. no problems what so ever..

  12. Faisal Naik Said:

    @Wajid: Any complaints of busy or call failure on incoming calls from your friends and family on this fibre number?

  13. Hunain Said:

    Ptcl has very bad management system, i found them very disrespective, unfacilitative and seems to have no will to solve the problems of there customers. Besides that i already having up with 2 telephones, i took such a foolery step of having the 3rd ptcl connection only and only for having dsl on it this time without further delay like i was facing up on previous numbers but unfortunately i was wrong, here again i caught back into the same problem i was persisting from very before. Whenever i request or apply for broadband from any of my numbers either by telephone or online i got the same message “The service had already been applied to this Telephone” regardless the number on which i was appling is fixed on the same day. I called thousand of times to 1236 from last 30 days but still nothing had happened and very surprisingly on the last night when the customer officer said “Sir, aap kay number seh koi complaint issue hi nahi huwi” ..
    Here anybody of you could please tell me the most effective way or the person to complaint for this bad management.

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