Comment 3 for bug 229884

> The Python GeoIP library only gives country-level granularity
> unless you pay for the full database, which is not particularly
> useful here. http://blogama.org/node/58 claims to provide
> more accurate data, but is an 11MB zip file ...

I apologise if I missed the point in your comment, but I sense my original suggestion may have got lost in the wash, so at the risk of duplication:

Currently, (or at least, the last time I ran the installer), one must select ones location, which otherwise defaults to somewhere in America I think.

What I was proposing was:

- During install
- Iff there is a active network detected
- Make a request to some.geoip.lookup.service.on.the.internet.example.com (eg, installer-geo-lookup.canonical.com)
- The above returns a best guess country code.

Other than the ability to make an http request, there is no additional data required on the installer medium.

I'm pretty sure the open source / MaxMind geo db licence would allow this sort of service to be setup and run.

Now, the installer can pick the "default" location as the capital of the (guessed) country.

It's still not perfect, but when I'm in Edinburgh Scotland, having the default be London, UK is better than NYC, USA.

I'd be wary of a more granular service as in my experience the accuracy isn't always that great. Country level is often in the >95% range. City level (at least outside the USA) is often much much lower.

Guessing wrong is, imho, worse than not guessing. Thus, just adjusting the default to the most likely country is a step in the right direction, accurate to a high degree, and cheap and easy.