Emil Larsen (.com)

UK Proxy Server's checkout page

Scothosts got in touch with me after my blog of its proxy service. You can read the original article, with Scothosts’ comment, here.

Scothosts’ response raises three important issues:

1: Scothosts could do more to emphasise you’re signing up for a subscription, because once you’ve added the proxy to the shopping basket it doesn’t explicitly say you’ll be billed every month. When I ordered the proxy, I certainly didn’t realise that it was a subscription. Many people will only need a proxy for a short period of time, covering business travel or a holiday, so this could catch them out (and on that note, why not release a £3/week service?).

2: Scothosts has said 2Mbit/sec is what you can expect from its UK proxy server in Denmark, while I was getting 1.16Mbit/sec – which isn’t far wide of the mark. The speeds should really be advertised better when you’re buying the product. It’s curious that accessing BBC’s iPlayer HD service, which needs 3.2Mbit/sec of bandwidth, worked without a hitch when I couldn’t surf at those speeds elsewhere. This is where my throttling speculation came from, but I accept that there needs to be more investigation on this topic before a true conclusion can be reached (perhaps the iPlayer uses resource-friendly UDP streaming… or something… to help those data packets flow a little quicker).

The clear 30GB per month data allowance offered by Scothosts (for its £9.99 service) is refreshing. I don’t recall seeing that when I ordered the product, but this is the kind of honest advertising many “unlimited bandwidth” ISPs could do with.

3: The way I treat my blog is different to the way I treat my work. When I’m writing articles for computer magazines and websites, I get paid. I’m also in constant contact with the manufacturer, which means any problems I encounter can be discussed to ensure a fair review. Blogging is a more rough and ready approach, plus I’m shelling out my own cash so it’s a more personal and biased form of writing.

The end effect can be the same though: if you google “UK Proxy Server review”, my blog comes top. If it matters to companies, they can avoid a blog’s inherent bias by giving more authoritative sites like The Register a chance to write up on their product or service.

I’ll be writing more about proxy servers on my blog (and, perhaps, for proper publications) in the future. These services are becoming more important with the rise of geographically-restricted internet telly like the iPlayer, Hulu and ITV streaming and, right now, there is a lack of info on what proxies can offer. In the mean time, I’ve decided to remove my rating for Scothosts UK Proxy Server until I’ve tested a few more competing products.

BBC One live streaming

Homesickness can hit us all when we’re travelling or living abroad. Instead of trying to change my tastes though, I always have a jar of marmite and a few British TV shows to hand.

I prefer the BBC’s and ITV’s live-channel streaming service, as well as on-demand services, to downloading TV shows via Bittorrent (which can be a slow process if you’re in a hotel). This means BBC One and ITV live can be watched live on a computer, as long as it has a British IP address.

A proxy server gives you such an address even if you’re sat in outer-Mongolia, which means I can get my weekly dose of Match of the Day, Top Gear and England international football games anywhere in the world.

Setting up a proxy server is easy to do but, as many of these services, you have to change browser depending on what you want to view. BBC’s streaming and iPlayer services only work in Internet Explorer, while ITV’s only seemed to work in Firefox. There’s also an annoying bug in Internet Explorer 8 where it won’t remember your proxy password (even if you follow website guides to reduce IE’s logon security settings), so be prepared to enter it at least three times before you can reliably watch a show.

So, Scothosts sells a proxy for £9.99 per month via its UK Proxy Server website. This is, misleadingly, a Paypal subscription, so 60 quid will roll out of your account if you forget about it for half a year, say.

From Denmark with an 80Mbit/sec fiber connection, I downloaded a file at above 2Mbytes/sec from a private server in the UK without the Scothosts proxy enabled.. With the proxy enabled, this speed plummeted to 148Kbytes/sec. These speeds were typical of my experience, night and day.

Streaming HD content from BBC iPlayer – which goes above this bandwidth – was no problem though, suggesting Scothosts throttles speeds depending on usage.

I also got an error message a couple of times saying only 5 IP address are allowed. This happened when I accessed more than one website, which either brought browsing to a crawl or failed to load webpages at all.

I decided to cancel the service on the first day of my second month and politely asked for a refund, since I didn’t need it for a second month. However, Scothosts ignored my request, but did help me to cancel the rolling subscription. I’m not hugely bothered about paying for another month (because I’ll use the service), but I’m fairly sure Scothosts is breaking the Distant Selling Regulations – in particular the 7-day cooling off period required for all goods and services bought online.

Update: 16/10/2009

Scothosts got in touch to challenge my article (read its response in the comments section). I have therefore written a follow up article to this post.

The Danes have got one up on the Brits because their Freeview HD service is already up and running, while UK audiences have to wait until 2010 for the pleasure.

Mpeg2 digital TV, which is what UK Freeview uses, is already being phased out by the Danes, with only four channels in the format remaining now and until it is laid to rest in 2012.

The replacement format, Mpeg4, is up and running with TVs and set-top boxes all advertising the newer standard. While there is only 75 per cent Mpeg4 coverage at present, this is set to hit 100 per cent on November 1st when the analogue signal is switched off.

If you spend around £100 on a set-top box, you’ll get one capable of receiving Mpeg4 HD channels, sent out in glorious 720p. I’ll be doing that before Christmas, so I can gloat to my friends over the holiday season.

I lost my bag with camera and wallet on Copenhagen’s S-tog today.

The bag is a blue/white BMW F1 rucksack and the camera is a Sony Alpha-100 SLR.

It occured to me that there are no other Emil Mahler Larsen’s in the world, so if you’ve Googled for me, here I am. Call me on 50 66 83 75 so I can pick up my stuff.

Frankly though, I don’t expect to see any of my things again. Terrible day.

Denmark is one of Vodafone's passport countries

Vodafone’s free summer roaming promotion doesn’t work in Denmark and/or for pay as you talk users, despite the website and shop assistants saying it does.

I switched from Orange to Vodafone at the beginning of July, hoping to avoid the £90 I spent on roaming charges last summer. But when I arrived in Denmark, both my unlocked mobile phones wouldn’t call out, although they would receive calls and send/receive text messages. As a frequent traveller, I immediately knew there was something wrong with Vodafone’s service, especially since I had international calls unbarred and Vodafone passport enabled.

Vodafone customer service had this to say to me:

“Emil, I’m sorry to let you know that you’ll not be able to make calls on the Denmark network using the Pay As You Talk service, as we do not have an international roaming agreement for this service with any Denmark networks.

We always advise our customers to contact us before going abroad to make sure they have all the necessary information about the usage of their phone and charges.

You can check the details online just by clicking here .”

Vodafone's website confirms Danish coverage for Pay As You Talk customers

So I went to the link and it told me calls in Denmark are enabled for Pay As You Talk customers – contrary to what Vodafone’s costumer service told me. So I complained some more and got this response:

“I’m sorry to know that you’re not able to use your phone Denmark.

I apologize for all the mis-information provided by one of my colleague.

Emil, what I’ve done for you is I’ve credited yoru account with £10 which you’ve spent on freedom pack.”

My experience leads me to suspect Vodafone is playing dirty tricks with its summer roaming promotion. Vodafone has to pay phone operators in other countries to connect customers like me via their networks, so its summer roaming promotion is probably a money-losing campaign. But, perhaps, it just blocks some users to reduce its losses.

I hope Ofcom investigates Vodafone’s practises… if it has any balls at all.

SMP, the north London theatre company I’m a member of, will be putting on Disco Inferno June 17th-20th. Go to the website and buy your tickets now if you want to see me sing, dance and wear flares (you won’t see much “acting” though).