Answer to a comment by -tvu after my rant against BT:

Are the businesses in London that slow? How difficult is it get cell (mobile) service started?

Do not worry, -tvu, my set up in London was as easy as it could be. I have installed myself in California, in Paris, in other cities in Spain and this was the easiest by far. London deserves a five-star rating for easiness of instalation. In retrospective, it was as easy as the “USA without the work permit”.

• Cell phone: I use pay-as-you-go. You go to the store, you buy a phone in cash and start making and receiving calls.
• Bank account: If you are a student, you follow London Business School instructions and you walk out of HSBC with a bank account in your first visit. They do a lot of checks and the interview takes about three hours (lots of paperwork), but if you follow the checklist as I did, everything goes smooth.
• Flathunting: You need to do your homework and know what you want and what you do not want. That is the most difficult part. If you start visiting rental agencies without a clear criteria, they can drive you mad. Horror stories talk about 30+ visits to appartments. In my case:
• I arrived London 25 days before start of classes (not to flathunt, but it helped a lot)
• I prepared a detailed list of specifications of what I wanted. That took me two days walking around neighboorhoods and two quick visits to appartments to realize what was going on.
• I printed it out and made copies.
• I visited many rental agencies and discussed with them what they had. Quick tip: Avoid foxtons unless you are desperate, although they have the most useful website, these are, in my personal opinion, the most manipulative flat sellers of all.
• I said NO to many of their offers, the ones that did not fit my requirements
• I said YES to ten visits, all of them good, and got a very good feeling of what was out there and for what price.
• I picked up the flat that I loved!
• Utilities: Electricity, water and gas work from day one.
• IT: Telephone and Broadband have been way slow, as discussed in my previous post

My previous post was probably misleading. Only activating broadband with BT has felt like an episode of the Twilight Zone. In general, everything has worked out extremely well.