It’s time to move again, this time to the burbs, to Telefonplan, “a stone’s throw from trendy restaurant“By way of context, the link refers to an article (in Swedish) that has real estate agents advertising homes in the area thusly. and club Landet, which won a Gulddraken award off Dagens Nyheter this yearThis is what restaurants and bars aspire to do in Stockholm..

Konstfack, Sweden’s best art school (or so I’m told), has just moved nextdoor, into the old Ericsson headquarters, whose architectural style is a very clean modernism that nevertheless affords some subtle flourishes.I really like it, and might have to illustrate what I mean with a photo essay, soon.

Artists repopulating old industrial landscapes, cool new restaurants and clubs, design exhibitions at my doorstep — does that sound familiar? Indeed, I am moving to the Williamsburg of Stockholm. In fact, I ran into some of my hipper workmates while exploring the neighborhood by bike today — they were househunting.

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My apartment, my eighth in three years, will be available on Oct 15. Before then I am spending a week at a friend’s place, then a week in New York, attending Felix and Michelle’s wedding.Take that as a forecast for further sporadic posting in the coming weeks. As with my last post about moving, this post is actually about how atrocious the UPC cable company is. I won’t need UPC in my new place, so I called them up today to cancel the service. Fine, the UPC man tells me, we can do that at the end of November. WTF? I moved out 2 days ago, I tell him, I don’t need it anymore, and certainly not until December. And besides, I know they can turn service on and off within minutes, as I’ve seen them do it while on the phone with them trying to help them restore one of their numerous service outages.

There was no budging him. All he did was refer to the avtal, the “agreement” that I signed with them: They require a calendar month to turn off the service. As today is October 3, the calendar month becomes November.

I can see two reasons why they might do this: Until recently, they were the only provider of cable and broadband internet services to many places in Stockholm, and as is the case with any monopoly, they can and therefore will screw the customer. Second, it is in UPC’s interest to extend the revenue stream from departing customers for as long as possible, especially if they are losing market share to a newcomer.

None of this makes it right. I’d recommend the newcomer, Bredbandsbolaget, as they offer faster service at lower prices, but in fact most of Bredbandsbolaget’s terms of service require a three-month warning before cancelling the avtal.

Which goes to show that a duopoly is often just as bad as a monopoly. This market is ripe for an upstart that positions itself as a rebel, on the side of the customer, with an avtal that does not lock them in.

I’m beginning to instinctively recoil from that word, avtal. Like with kollektivavtalcollective bargaining, it is beginning to be a synonym in my mind for things you agree to against your best interests, or things you only pretend to agree to when in fact you have no choice. It’s newspeak, what it is.