'The' must-have app for the iPhone to be launched at Mobile World Congress

Broadband Genie is currently knee deep in 1GB advertising flash drives, vol-au-vents and business cards as we prepare to bring you all the latest news from the biggest mobile conference of them all, Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona.

The event is absolutely massive. I mean, truly massive. Covering eight huge conference centres over four days, the 'village' map is bigger than your average ordinance survey and absolutely everyone in mobile is here – from the hardcore back-end kit manufacturers to app makers – one-man bands to Microsoft and the rest of the big guys.

Apologies for the headline – it's the tag line of about a gazillion press releases we've had relating to the conference so far. More than 300 and counting, with a good chunk claiming to be the best app since the Apple iSlicedbread. The reason? This year's MWC has App Planet for the first time – an entire hall dedicated to things to fill your phone up with. And while we're sure BlackBerry, Android, Windows and the rest will get a look in, it's a fair bet that Apple will corner the market. We'll try and bring you a few of the best (and worst) ones.

But more importantly, one of this year's key conference topics is mobile broadband. It's obviously a key topic for Genie all year round, so its great to have all the biggest players on the worldwide stage at once to quiz. We'll be talking to everyone we can, trying to get to the bottom of why things are so slow right now, as well as what the future holds: will it be LTE, WiMAX, or both?

It's looking good for LTE right now. It seems to have more backers in the service provider market and the big players are starting to mass on its side. We're looking forward to getting to grips with the Alcatel-Lucent LTE car tomorrow. Yup, the mind boggles.

Met the Alcatel-Lucent guys this evening at the pre-MWC 'ShowStoppers' event, which had some other great teasers on show. Plantronics gave us a sneak peak at four new headsets due for release tomorrow (we'll review one of them over the next week or so), while MoGo was showing off its really nice iPhone case, which has a tiny, handy little hands-free kit built in. It's mini mouse is really cool too.

Then there was Novatel's Mi-Fi device (pictured) and the very cool PowerMat collection, to name but a few. All this and it's not even Day 1 yet – it's going to be a busy week.