Barcelona Diary

So here we are once again in Barcelona for Mobile World Congress. The Metro is working after all, as are the buses, though you won’t catch many delegates on one of those. The hotel room has a walk-in wardrobe. Sorry, is a walk-in wardrobe. If you want cold water from the shower, turn the tap fully to the left. Turn it to the right if you want it even colder. And all for just €220 a night.

Last night, arriving late, we managed to walk up, down and across the Ramblas without being mugged. We were only offered drugs four times. Still, I did see three policeman searching suspected pickpockets, which is three more than I’ve ever seen before on the Ramblas, so maybe the message did finally get through that delegates to this and other events in the city are fed up of having their possessions nicked.

As for the show itself, the madness begins soon. Nokia is holding a press conference at 8.30 this morning, a move that smacks of bravado or stupidity, given the length of the queues to get in to the event. We’ll be doing our best to cover all the news from the show, with myself here in Barcelona, and our team back in the office Hooverring up the press releases that are disgorged from the show on a daily basis.

As for the likely themes, 4G and the devices needed to support super-fast mobile connectivity are likely to dominate, and we will also have the recurring battle between the mobile operators and the over the top service providers, a battle the operators show no signs of winning. On the subject of which, whatever happened to WAC? We also like to sniff out the quirkier stories from the smaller companies whose stand only cost them a five-figure sum…
As for everything else, who knows, but we look forward – sort of – to the human tide of besuited delegates scurrying from one hall to another; to the daily conundrum of how many networking parties you can get to in one evening; and to the complete lack of vegetables for the next four days as we gorge on sponsored tapas. Mobile World Congress, it’s great to be back.

David Murphy
Editor