Barcelona, Sunday. Ah, the life of a techie journalist! Spent Thursday and Friday night at the one of the poshest hotels in town, courtesy of NetEvents, being briefed by companies involved some of the communications infrastructure we tend to take for granted. You could tell the hotel was posh because it charged seven euros for a half-litre of water, left out temptingly in the room's dry air.

Also it charged fifty euros a day for internet access - just ten euros less than the cost of the room I have for the rest of this week, which has free Wifi access but is the size of a cupboard. There is not much space left in Barcelona, with Mobile World Congress starting tomorrow - the picture above shows the massive showground as it looked today.

Obviously the big hotels are trying to cash in on Internet links while they can. It wasn't so long ago that you daren't make a phone call from a hotel room without checking out the very, very small print. One friend of mine was presented with a bill for more than a thousand pounds after a weekend's stay. But of course mobile phones killed off that little scam (and replaced it with a few of their own).

They'll kill off extortionate hotel web charges too, if the MWC people have their way. There is talk of mobile links going up to 100Mbit/sec, and there will be very little point in  offering people that if they can't afford to use it. 

I've been in Barcelona three days now, MWC hasn't even started yet, and I already have more to write about than I have time for. As a taster take a look at the picture right, taken this evening at an MWC preview  event. It's a games controller for mobile phones from a company called Zeemote. The idea, I suppose, is that instead of dislocating your thumbs trying to control a game from a keypad you can do so in more style, and impress your friends, using this miniature joystick.