Unified communications, mobile services, and open-source phones are set to be hot topics at this week's Mobile World Congress (MWC), formerly the 3GSM World Congress, in Barcelona. Linux-based phones and software will be on show, while new mobile services are set to be launched at the event.

The GoHello service, to be officially launched by Speakanet at the MWC today, enables firms to do away with desk phones entirely and just equip staff with mobile handsets. The benefit of this is that workers can be reached at all times, not just while at their desks.

"GoHello replaces the desk phone with an all-mobile solution," said Speakanet chief executive Francois Mazoudier, who characterised it as a cross between mobile and web services.

Business customers get a local main number for incoming calls, which are routed via Speakanet's datacentre to the receptionist's mobile phone. The receptionist can transfer calls to employees using a PC-based switchboard console.

No software needs to be installed to use GoHello, which supports all mobile networks. "It's as easy as setting up an email account, but you have a fully loaded, fully mobile telephone system," said Mazoudier. The service is available immediately and costs £16.50 per user per month.

Meanwhile, Linux-based phones will be on show by the LiMo Foundation and Red Bend software. The LiMo Platform, unveiled at the beginning of February, is said to be the first globally competitive, Linux-based software platform for mobile handsets. Backed by vendors such as Motorola, Panasonic, Samsung and Vodafone, LiMo is a hardware-independent phone platform with publicly available APIs for application developers.

Red Bend will be showing its MAST platform that enables a phone to be fully customised over-the-air. Based on Trolltech’s Qtopia Greenphone Linux platform, MAST enables a handset to be provisioned remotely from a Synchronica Device Management Server.

Also at the show, DotMobi, the registry for the .mobi top level domain, is expected to make available its database of mobile handset specifications. Aimed at developers, the web-based database is claimed to be more accurate than other such guides.