Originally Posted by
pseudoswede
Very strange. I'm an American citizen. I whipped out my Visa card and had a Telenor SIM card within minutes.
It may have been that this restriction only applies to nano-SIMs. Regular SIMs come in special pre-pay packs, but it seemed like their nano-SIMs had to be first registered in their system and then assigned to a pre-paid plan. Still, it's very frustrating that you can't do this without a personal number!
Hopefully as more manufacturers adopt nano-SIM, this will be less of a problem in future...
You should see how frustrating it is when Swedish citizens born outside the country (like my kids) trying to get a samordningsnummer (a personal number for Swedish citizens born and living outside of Sweden, and for foreigners who need to do business or own property within Sweden) and trying to get a passport.
If the fifth digit of your girlfriend's personal number is off by 6, then that means she also has a samordningsnummer. Many non-government systems cannot handle that.
Ah, yes, that's exactly what it is. She was born outside of Sweden but has Swedish citizenship by way of a Swedish parent. The guys at the Telenor store had apparently never seen such a thing before and were convinced there must be a mistake in her passport!