Creative Deletion

A lot of technology today seems to ignore the complexities of world time, timezones and daylight savings. In fact, as far as I know, there doesn’t even seem to exist a good watch that makes it easy to accurately know the time around the world.

The following picture is from Montevideo, Uruguay. It is 3 hours from GMT. And so is Nuuk (aka. Godthåb), Greenland. So while I am in Montevideo in South America I am sort of in the same time zone as Denmark - how about that? This time of year, though, most of Greenland observes DST, so local time in Nuuk is now GMT-2, not -3.

If only adjusting your clock to local time around the world was a question of offsets from GMT, figuring out the local time around the would be relatively easy. What really complicates things is summertime (aka. Daylight Savings Time or DST).

In Venezuala there is a certain mad man in charge that wants to create a new seperate time zone! The timezones don’t change that often, but recently there has been changes regarding DST. In USA the days when DST starts and stops was changed in 2007. DST starts and begins on different dates in different countries. Some countries within a certain timezone have DST and some don’t. A European I know asked a local person in a northern African country “Tomorrow at this time, what time is it?” The local person looked very puzzled after hearing the odd question. DST isn’t used in that particular country.

I don’t wear a watch regularly, but use my iPhone to get the time. When travelling to a different time zone, I can go to the time settings in the phone and select the city that I am in or a city that I think is in the same time zone. The iPhone will then use it’s internal clock and timezone information for the different cities to calculate the local time in the city in question.

Recently I was in Buenos Aires and, since it is a big city, of course I could find it in the settings on the iPhone. But… I came to find out that my clock was not showing the correct local time. I talked to an employee in the hotel about it and he said that Argentina in 2007 had readopted DST.

This change made by Argentina had not been reflected in my iPhone nor my MacBook Pro.

I learned that political changes can unexpectedly change timezones and DST. And current “world time” clocks don’t seem reflect these changes.

A lot of technology is developed in Europe or the US, where timezones don’t change that often. And some software developers seem to assume that it works the same way around the world. For instance there is JavaScript software that get a visitors local time from his browser and compare it to GMT to get the visitors GMT offset. That’s fine if you know that the user is in the US for instance. But in most of the Carribean DST isn’t used and in some parts of South America DST is reversed along with summer and winter.

Here’s the lesson for software developers: To accurately calculate a users time zone, knowing a GMT offset is not enough. Getting the closest (politically and geographically) city is best. Furthermore, time zones and DST policies change, so for a world clock to be up-to-date it should probably be updated with the newest time zone changes once a year or so.

About 6 months after I complained to Scandinavian telco “3″, they have called me and said that they no longer want me to pay 7000+ (~1000EUR) for something that was supposed to be free. They promised a free trial of up to 3+Mbit mobile Internet access. I took them up on the offer and used the connection while sailing in the Swedish archipelagos.

In the summer of 2007 I was about to go sailing for a few weeks in Sweden. I wanted to be able to go online during that time. If I hadn’t been able to get Internet access I probably wouldn’t go sailing for more than a week or so.

I had seen an ad for “mobile broadband”. 3 offered more than 3Mbit (today the offer up to 7.2Mbit) Internet access via a USB dongle made by Huawei. Because 3 is a Swedish company with coverage in both Sweden and Denmark, the price was supposed to be the same in Denmark and Sweden. 3 offered a free trial for 30 days. So I ordered it to use in Sweden. A box with the hardware arrived and there was a brochure in the box saying that in foreign countries you would have to pay a rate per MB in addition to the Danish subscription, but that Sweden was exempt from this. Very well. I tried it out in Denmark and it worked well.

Then we set off from Rungsted Havn and sailed south towards the Stockholm Archipelago. The first place we stopped at is a tiny island called Utklippan. There was no fresh water available for the visiting boats or in the latrine. Fresh water probably has to be sailed to the island. Visiting boats have tanks with fresh water so it’s not a big problem. While there was no running water, there were two different open wifi networks with internet access! I tried the 3 adapter too, but that couldn’t me online on Utklippan.

There were a lot of seagulls on Utklippan:

I took a picture of the toilet/latrine. In traditional Swedish style, yellow with heart shaped windows:

We then sailed on to harbors at large towns and natural harbors in the “wilderness”. The wilderness was not too far away from areas with Swedish summer houses though. Surprisingly, even in rather large towns the coverage was not good enough for a stable Internet connection through the 3 USB modem. For instance in the harbor of Kalmar I could not get online. Some places I could get a connection with decent throughput though.

Heavy clouds over Västervik - the “3″ mobile broadband coverage wasn’t very good here:

After I came home I sent the 3 USB modem back to 3. Eventually I received a letter with a invoice of more than 7000 DKK (more than $1300 USD). Wow, that’s a lot more than the price of “free” I was expecting. So I called 3 customer service, and they told me I had been using the network of Telia - another Swedish telco. I said that the brochure said that usage in Sweden was supposed to be free. But the guy from 3 told me that it was my responsibility to know that I was using Telia’s network and that it wasn’t free.

I did not plan to pay for something that I was told was free. As far as I was concerned the agreement between 3 and I, was that I could try the product for free for 30 days, and it was free in Denmark as well as Sweden. At no point did I get any warning on my computer that the 3G USB modem was roaming and using another network and that this would cost me money.

So, then I wrote an official complaint and sent it to 3 with certified snail mail. I got no written response but someone from 3 called my on my phone and told me that I should pay the invoice.

I then sent an official complaint to “Teleankenævnet”. A private institution that handles complaints related to telecommunications. After a while I was called up by a “Retention Solution Consultant” from 3 who told me that I didn’t have to pay the invoice afterall. He said that I might receive a request to pay the invoice anyway. I made him send me an email stating that I did not have to pay. This request later proved to be a prudent move.

I later received a letter from a lawyer firm/collection agency stating that I owed 3 some money. Then I called them up on the telephone briefly told them about the situation and forwarded the email stating that I didn’t owe 3 anything. Finally the lawyer firm/collection agency sent me a letter stating that things were settled.

The whole thing took up a lot of my time, but I’m glad that it is settled now.