BARCELONA -- Mobile World Congress 2009 -- What could the booth crew at Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE: ALU) do in 20 minutes that would make a Mobile World Congress visitor want to know more?

We'd already put the Nokia Networks and Nortel Networks Ltd. teams through their paces at this year's show, now it was AlcaLu's turn. (See MWC 2009: Nortel Networks Booth Tour and MWC 2009: Nokia Siemens Booth Tour.)

Alcatel-Lucent's director of technology demonstrations for the wireless business group, Bill Goers, was our guide. With the clock running, he explained there were a number of different themes or areas of focus -- including the use of IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) application servers to enable carriers to provide a unified customer experience across multiple social networking sites, and an LTE demonstration that included the use of a customer profile engine for marketing strategies -- and noted that no single company (yes, not even AlcaLu!) was capable of doing absolutely everything by itself.

That was the cue to mention the new ng Connect Program, which Goers described as "our ecosystem play" for next-generation mobile broadband applications development. (See AlcaLu Forms an Ecosystem.)

But there was something missing: We were surprised to not hear about the company's femtocell developments during the tour, though it's tough to squeeze everything into 20 minutes:



All photos by Siqui Sánchez; all captions by...

— Ray Le Maistre, International News Editor, Light Reading