The buzz is back in Barcelona, declared Mobile World Congress (MWC) organizers this week. While the credit crunch cast a shadow over last year's event, visitors in 2010 were eager to take the mobile industry to the next level. The main topic of discussion? What you can do with mobile broadband and applications.

Appetite for apps: telcos just can't get enough

Monetization was one of the most common themes dominating the 2010 MWC – the technology is there, so now operators, network companies and service providers want to understand how to bank on it. And applications are, for now, the Holy Grail: everyone wants them.

But according to many industry analysts, those same applications are still a double-edged sword. In the search for the next killer application, operators have to find new ways to create revenue to fend off huge application license fees and resist platform fragmentation.

Peter Jarich, an industry analyst with Current Analysis, says this stretch of the road to monetization is still rocky. "Operators are still struggling with the question of applications," he says. "Vendors are doing their best to help them squeeze the most money from mobile broadband services, both now and in the future, and applications support is one important way to do that."

Two industry moves in particular shed more light on the battle for applications business. The world's 15 largest operators launched an open, international applications platform on the first day of the MWC, called the Wholesale Applications Community. It is a clear attempt to fight against platform fragmentation and make application developers a little happier. Also, Ericsson launched its own application web store, the eStore. This open marketplace is directly aimed at operators, and 30,000 applications for all mobile operating systems are currently available.

Around 5000 application developers attended the MWC, and 120 companies had stands in the App Planet area. The goal was to bring application developers and mobile operators together.

Another Barcelona buzz word was LTE. Although commercial deployment is still some way off, monetization, or commercialization rather, was the main focus here too.

"Commercialization was front and center when it came to LTE," Jarich says. "New deals were announced, and technology solutions launched for solid voice support once LTE hit the markets. At the same time, the market is clearly still looking to the future with impressive throughput demonstrations and small cell designs aimed at maximizing spectrum reuse."

So what about sustainability? It has been such a prominent area in previous years. "The focus on sustainability has slowly softened over the past few years," Jarich says. "This seems to be a result of operators and vendors alike thinking ‘green’ consistently, with carbon concerns becoming a regular aspect of network considerations."

Ericsson President and CEO Hans Vestberg maintains that sustainability is an integral and natural part of everything the company does. "We can transform other industries such as health, transport, media, government and utilities," he says. "Broadband will not only play a key role in creating new business models that transform economies, but it will also reduce carbon emissions in all the ways we work and live."