ubiquity crashed with UnicodeDecodeError in changed(): 'ascii' codec can't decode byte 0xc3 in position 3: ordinal not in range(128)

Crashed when upgrading from Ubuntu 11.04, before (while?) selecting timezone.

TEST CASE:
1. In step 'Where are you?' enter a location with a non-ascii character (accented letter)

ProblemType: Crash
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.10
Package: ubiquity 2.7.15
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.0.0-9.12-generic 3.0.3
Uname: Linux 3.0.0-9-generic i686
Architecture: i386
CasperVersion: 1.279
Date: Mon Aug 22 20:18:32 2011
ExecutablePath: /usr/lib/ubiquity/bin/ubiquity
InterpreterPath: /usr/bin/python2.7
LiveMediaBuild: Ubuntu 11.10 "Oneiric Ocelot" - Alpha i386 (20110822)
ProcCmdline: /usr/bin/python /usr/lib/ubiquity/bin/ubiquity gtk_ui
ProcEnviron: Error: [Errno 13] Permission denied: '/proc/3408/environ'
PythonArgs: ['/usr/lib/ubiquity/bin/ubiquity', 'gtk_ui']
SourcePackage: ubiquity
Title: ubiquity crashed with UnicodeDecodeError in changed(): 'ascii' codec can't decode byte 0xc3 in position 3: ordinal not in range(128)
Traceback:
 Traceback (most recent call last):
   File "/usr/lib/ubiquity/plugins/ubi-timezone.py", line 117, in changed
     .startswith(text.lower())]]
 UnicodeDecodeError: 'ascii' codec can't decode byte 0xc3 in position 3: ordinal not in range(128)
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)
UserGroups: