The one big drawback of Mobile World Congress is that it covers everything (and just about everyone is there). So you must be prepared to spend hours trudging back and forward: down its airport-style travellators and escalators into vast halls - each of which could easily be a handsome exhibition on its own - within which you must try to outfox the desperately bad floorplan and associated signage to eventually find the stand or meeting room that is your quest.

The one big advantage of Mobile World Congress is that it covers everything (and just about everyone is there). So you get the entire mobile industry in one (admitedly large) spot and you can find, be recommended, or happen upon, all sorts of interesting companies, products or services, that you might not otherwise be aware of.

We’ve pulled together video interviews of three such offering clever stuff to enhance the customer experience what we’re calling the middle - the interesting bit between the handsets and smartphones at one ‘end’ and the mobile and network infrastructure at the other.

OnMobile has launched what it calls a ‘consumer communication cloud’. End users use it to assemble all their phone contacts, messages and so on in a single virtual location where they can be got at no matter what device or service the user happens to be using. We spoke to Florent Stroppa, General Manager Europe for OnMobile.

Another interview with Eldar Tuvey, CEO and founder of Wandera, exposed that company’s corporate mobile usage optimising. The idea is to hand enterprises the network controls and some in-house analytics to give them real-time visibility and policy control so they can dig about to reduce data and roaming costs.

If anyone thought LTE meant an end to data congestion and the disappearance of ticked-off customers (did they? not sure that any sane person did) then they’re having a rude awakening now - especially in the US where LTE average speeds have plummeted. Biren Sood, CEO of Vasona Networks says he has software to help carriers get visibility of individual cell performanceand deal with any congestion in an intelligent way.