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Huawei scores major publicity coup by giving away high speed broadband cards

The GSMA came up with two good ideas this year for Mobile World Congress. First, provide a full-size Press room - a novel idea! And second, for those who can't get a WiFi signal to "stick" how about a joint stunt with operators to demonstrate HSPA cards? Give every visiting journo one for a week!

The manufacturer, Huawei, came up with the HSPA dongles; Telefonica, Orange and T-Mobile came up with the SIM cards. And as a result of this clever bit of PR, NewsWireless was able to post its report about the Microsoft takeover of Danger live, from the Plaza hotel, while the press conference was still going.

The Huawei guys get extra kudos, too, for making the things work.

OK, the reason they don't all work is not entirely Someone Else's Problem, because it seems that early versions of the USB HSDPA modem may have "had issues" with their software. Certainly, when the NewsWireless card failed to work, it was clear that "a previous installation?" was the prime suspect.

But knowing what's causing it is one thing... fixing it is quite another. It involved uninstalling, and then re-installing, just about every networking driver and bluetooth device on my PC - and after at least seven reboots, they succeeded.

After saving our bacon, do they get the ultimate accolade: "This is a great product! wireless connectivity at 7 megabits!" and so on? Sadly, no; this is the GSMA congress, and there are a million idiots all trying to make calls on temporary "cell expander" devices instead of proper masts. I have to confess, I've used faster modems.

But! - at least it is working. And all around me, are miserable journalists who missed out on the GSMA free offer. And, as usual at 3GSM, the official LAN just went down...