3GSM Diary, day 5: Protests and porn

It's the last day at the Fira - but you'd be surprised at the number of extra visitors to the centre last night and this morning.

Not gadget geeks at all though - these are protesters. This morning, there was a group demonstrating under banners highlighting job losses at the newly merged Alcatel-Lucent - 12,500 are set to go.

The company's CEO Patricia Russo talked up the benefits of business transformation at the show - not a stance likely to go down well with those holding placards outside.

The Alcatel-Lucent demonstrators weren't the only ones making their feelings known. Rumour has it last night also saw another protest outside the conference, this one with a general gripe against the industry on health grounds.

Will these sorts of disputes continue as mobile subscriptions grow? It won't be long before we find out, it seems. Telecoms CEOs have been throwing around big predictions about how they expect customer numbers to grow.

Mike Zafirovski of Nortel believes that in the coming years there could be tens or hundreds of connections per person as every device from the mobile to the air conditioning unit and home electronics becomes networked.

Nokia Siemens Networks' CEO Simon Beresford-Wylie predicts five billion subscribers by 2015, mostly from the emerging markets around the world. This will present challenges the mobile industry must tackle - including devices' power usage and how countries with poor electricity infrastructure will be able to power their base stations.

Vendors are already working on this. Motorola for example is developing base stations that are powered by sustainable energies such as wind power. Ericsson too is experimenting with new ways to power base stations and is using the 3GSM conference to show off a unit aimed at developing economies that uses biodiesel.

But just in case you were thinking mobile has gone all worthy, it's worth remembering the industry is fond of its porn. Yet again, the show has a hall dedicated to the 'adult' side of content.

Even so the nudity wasn't confined to that particular hall... LogicaCMG decided to attract attention to its stand by having women - naked except for bikini bottoms and yellow body-paint - wander around the show. Sorry LogicaCMG, even nudity can't make carrier services sexy.

Read more of Jo Best's 3GSM Diary:

• Day 4: Mobile's future killer apps?
• Day 3: Speed and a GSM wristwatch
• Day 2: Handsets at dawn
• Day 1: The biggest event in mobile...