The broadband market in the UK is retarded

Coming from Sweden I may be biased. But how about getting the information to the customer right?

Virgin Media

They will tell you if they can give you internet, but if they say they can't provide TV you have to explicitly ask them if it's ADSL they're offering. They won't tell you, and it's not in the product information.

I ask them if ADSL is the only internet this house can get, even from other providers. They say yes.

Sky

You're expected to know that TV services require a dish. And as for "Sky Fibre Unlimited", oh dear lord. It doesn't require a dish, but they sent us information that our fibre box must be connected to a phone line that can make outgoing and incoming calls. WTF? I called them and they tell me it's optional (I'm not interested in having a land line). Fine.

The send a letter saying they've scheduled the install for 28th of Jan. Then we get another letter saying they've rescheduled the install to the day we preferred, the 13th of Jan. Turns out that was just the TV installer, not Internet.

When the TV installer comes over he says that he's sure "Sky Fibre Internet" is ADSL, and it's called "Fibre" because it uses BTs fibre backbone. When I object that Google uses fibre, that doesn't mean you can call something fibre just because it can access Google he just shrugs. Also ADSL doesn't do the 38 or 76Mbps that they sell.

So I call Sky. No, they assure me, it's a fibre cable coming in to the house. I ask "so in my house there will be a box that takes fibre in one end, and normal network cable in the other?". They say yes.

So Virgin can only offer ADSL for our place, and Sky can't provide TV. And both are retarded liars.

BT

Girlfriend calls BT to see if they can offer Internet & TV (without dish). They can. They offer the same fibre, that can give us speeds similar to what Sky offers. They say it's the same technology as Sky would offer, since it's actually BT that'll own the thing either way. Great. So it's fibre with 60-odd Mbps down? Yes, depending on the distance to the house. Wait.... wait what? No, fibre doesn't work that way. I ask "is it actually a fibre cable coming in to the house?". Yes, and it connects to the fibre modem. "This fibre modem has fibre coming in one side, and normal network cable in the other?". Uhm, no, she says. It's copper to the box down the street.

GAAAAAH!

So it seems we're getting FTTC, with some unknown copper handoff technology. (63.5/20 is not exactly what you'd call an even number).


PS:
At the previous place we had Virgin Media cable. It was actually quite good in terms of speed and services. It did have some packet loss problems though.

Dual citizenship

I have dual citizenship since birth. German and Swedish.

Neither of these countries force you to give up your citizenship when getting a new one (at least not one in the EU).

The UK will allow me to become a citizen without denouncing my other citizenships.

Muhahahahahaa.....

Your personal number is invalid

It seems that when you leave the country you also leave some databases. I'm not sure if it's SPAR or something, but I'm not in birthday.se, and I've been told by at least one service (upplysning.se if I remember correctly) that my personal number is invalid.

I'm currently failing to register an account with binero.se. The form doesn't tell me straight out, but I suspect that it's rejecting my personal number.

Binero helpfully allows me to select United Kingdom from the dropdown of countries, but insists that I enter exactly 5 digits and nothing else (well, a space is optional) in the "zip code" field. *Le sigh*

Exchanging your drivers license

Fairly pain free.

I went to DVLA in Wimbledon.

Their website said that they open at 9:00. Lies. On the second Wednesday of every month they open 9:30. Other than that it went smoothly.

Fill out form D1 (a general form for all sorts of "give me a license to drive a regular car, please"), hand it and the Swedish license to the man behind the counter and wait for them to verify your passport as ID. Alternatively you can have them send the passport back in the post when they're done with it, but as that was my last form of ID I opted to wait.

All in all I'd say it took about 20 minutes, including filling in the form and queuing.

Things to bring:

• Old license (they will take this)
• Passport (you'll get it back or they'll mail it back)
• Proof of address (they didn't ask me for this, but would be stupid to not bring)
• A photo suitable for the drivers license.
• D1 form (they have forms there, so you don't really need to bring it)
• A pen. All the pens next to the forms were just gone.

 DVLA has an interactive guide that's actually helpful.

Sweden is expensive

I'm back in Stockholm for xmas. I didn't notice as much that things in London are cheaper until I come back here and just gasp every time I see the price of something.

Indian food: 125 SEK per dish! In London you can get food for 2 people plus a large soda delivered to your door within an hour for that kind of money. And it'll be of the same quality.

Mass transit is still more expensive in London, but it's a lot bigger and Stockholm is trying to catch up it seems.

But at least in Stockholm the phone works on the tube.

Hope you're feeling better

When you tell someone that you're home sick the default reply here seems to be "Hope you're feeling better".

Is it just me or is that weird? Better than what? I just told you two seconds ago and you say you hope I'm feeling better. Better than two seconds ago? No, it's pretty much the same.

It makes sense to me if there's been some time since they learned that I'm not feeling well, since it's actually possible for me to feel better now than then.

First contact with the UK health system: 15min waiting for doctor in the emergency care thing (I'm not yet registered with a GP so I had to go there). The doctor examined me and gave me antibiotics (no trip to pharmacy required).

Didn't have to pay anything, and they didn't even ask for my NI number or proof of address, or ID.

To register with a GP I'd need to have two forms of ID, of which one would be a proof of address. I didn't do that since I didn't have any proof of address on me.

So in short: Why don't people say "hope you feel better soon"? Is it just that it's an automatic (but often incorrect, such as in my case) thing you say to someone who's sick, or is it idiomatic?

2-factor madness

Sweden: Every single bank has 2-factor auth. Paypal does not offer 2-factor for Swedes.

UK: Not a single bank has 2-factor auth. Paypal offers three kinds of 2-factor for people in the UK.

(HSBC as the first UK bank (according to themselves) is rolling out 2-factor in about a month. 1995 called. They were watching Jurassic Park but paused it to congratulate you on copying their basic security measures)