diff --git a/speedtest_cli.py b/speedtest_cli.py
index c42d81e..ba0f38c 100755
--- a/speedtest_cli.py
+++ b/speedtest_cli.py
@@ -633,16 +633,7 @@ def speedtest():
                 line = ('%(id)4s) %(sponsor)s (%(name)s, %(country)s) '
                         '[%(d)0.2f km]' % server)
                 serverList.append(line)
-            # Python 2.7 and newer seem to be ok with the resultant encoding
-            # from parsing the XML, but older versions have some issues.
-            # This block should detect whether we need to encode or not
-            try:
-                unicode()
-                print_('\n'.join(serverList).encode('utf-8', 'ignore'))
-            except NameError:
-                print_('\n'.join(serverList))
-            except IOError:
-                pass
+            print_('\n'.join(serverList).encode('utf-8', 'ignore'))
             sys.exit(0)
     else:
         servers = closestServers(config['client'])
@@ -710,16 +701,8 @@ def speedtest():
         best = getBestServer(servers)
 
     if not args.simple:
-        # Python 2.7 and newer seem to be ok with the resultant encoding
-        # from parsing the XML, but older versions have some issues.
-        # This block should detect whether we need to encode or not
-        try:
-            unicode()
-            print_(('Hosted by %(sponsor)s (%(name)s) [%(d)0.2f km]: '
-                   '%(latency)s ms' % best).encode('utf-8', 'ignore'))
-        except NameError:
-            print_('Hosted by %(sponsor)s (%(name)s) [%(d)0.2f km]: '
-                   '%(latency)s ms' % best)
+        print_(('Hosted by %(sponsor)s (%(name)s) [%(d)0.2f km]: '
+               '%(latency)s ms' % best).encode('utf-8', 'ignore'))
     else:
         print_('Ping: %(latency)s ms' % best)