Mobile World Congress 2008 Diary - Tuesday

It's day one proper of the Congress and the queues just got tails. Long tails.

I arrive at the Fira early to struggle through the be-suited throng and get my seat at the big name keynotes. Not early enough, however, to claim a space on the main floor. The overflow gets rerouted to a mezzanine balcony where a pad and pen have been thoughtfully provided on every seat.

It's a shame the GSMA forgot to realise it would be pitch black in the auditorium. But then keeping journalists in the dark seems to be something of a recurring theme here.

Wireless from A to Z

Click on the links below to find out more…

A is for Antivirus
B is for Bluetooth
C is for The Cloud
D is for dotMobi
E is for Email
F is for FMC
G is for GPS
H is for HSDPA
I is for i-mode
J is for Japan Air
K is for Korea
L is for LBS
M is for M2M
N is for NFC
O is for Operating systems
P is for Pubs
Q is for QoS
R is for Roaming
S is for Satellite
T is for TV
U is for UMTS
V is for Virgin
W is for WiMax
X is for XDA
Y is for Yucca
Z is for Zigbee

Arun Sarin of Vodafone and Nokia's Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo are heading up the GSMA's bill, with China Mobile's Wang Jianzhou and Cisco's John Chambers rounding it off.

As Rob Conway, CEO of the GSMA, warms up the audience with some hard talk on data prices, yesterday's incident with commissioner Reding momentarily hangs spectre-like over proceedings. His message: move along commissioner, government intervention is not welcome. It "is not what we want to see".

I imagine Ms Reding got that message pretty loud and clear yesterday.

Conway makes way for Vodafone's chief Arun Sarin - who takes the talk smoothly off in the direction of mobile services, with a finely worded warning for delegates to up their game or watch Apple eat their lunch.

He also makes a plea for WiMax and LTE to make peace. Alphabet soups of acronyms do nothing to endear the customer to the industry, he tells us, and merely spread confusion's pestilence which is, of course, terrible for business. In essence: confused customers are not happy, data-guzzling customers so keep it simple stupid - please.

Nokia's Kallasvuo is up next.

"I've got a thing here in my pocket," he teases us. "A device you have not seen before. One that points to a new direction in innovation..."

Kallasvuo's 'thing' turns out to be a phone made entirely from recycled and/or reused materials - a razor-sharp looking handset stamped with the word 'remade'.

The audience is quickly warned not to get too excited, however, as it is only a concept phone and gets almost instantly slipped back into Kallasvuo's trouser pocket - until the next time he wants to have a Steve Jobs moment.

China Mobile's Wang appears to have brought his slide collection, which consists of statistics. A lot of statistics. Too many statistics. After slide four Wang sounds like he's managed to baffle himself.

The audience stopped listening after his opening gambit: the statistic to end all statistics - the subscriber base of China Mobile, as of the end of 2007, was 370 million.

If that wasn't impressive enough more than five million hands-to-hold-handsets are being added to that massive statistic per month.

Crumbs.

After a while Wang got our attention back by screening a rousing China Mobile promo video with an American voiceover, thrusting music and a lot of sweeping vistas. The message is about sustainability, social responsibility and combating climate change. The industry must do its bit, he tells us. China Mobile apparently is.

He ends with another statistic: three million waste phones collected for recycling by China Mobile last year - before welcoming us "to the 2008 Beijing Olympics".

Yep, the China PR machine has come to town.

Last but certainly by no means least is one of the tech industry's biggest and most influential figures, Cisco's John Chambers.

He's here to talk networks converging, speeds increasing, communications integrating - and is such a whirlwind of sound and fury that I spend about 10 minutes trying - unsuccessfully - to get a photo of him that isn't blurred.

The man is on the move. Literally. He skips off stage and mingles with the seated masses saying Time magazine got it wrong - it's not about 'You' it's about 'Us'. It's all about collaboration. Unfortunately he moves too quickly, trips too lightly for his congregation - who are now thinking ahead to lunch.

A future so fast, so always on and so seamlessly integrated that it doesn't have time for lunch is not a future this Congress would vote for. Period.