Guardian communications editor Richard Wray is in Barcelona this week for 3GSM - the mobile industry's annual get-together. Thankfully for us, he's reporting back every day for Technology Blog - click here for his updates.
A refreshing piece of honesty on the second day of the 3GSM conference in Barcelona from Naguib Sawiris, head of Orascom - the mobile operator which owns Wind in Italy and Mobilink in Pakistan.
Having sat through opening speeches from GSM Association chief executive Rob Conway, Orange boss Sanjiv Ahuja and Vodafone's Arun Sarin (which included the usual cobblers about "giving customers a rich experience" and liberating the world through the power of mobile communications), Mr Sawiris took the stage to announce he's in it for the money.
"I'm the largest shareholder in my company so I am very interested in the money," he added. "Wherever I smell money I go," he added.
As a shareholder in Hutchison Telecommunications International, which just sold its stake in Indian operator Hutch to Vodafone for $11.1bn (£5.6bn) he turned to Mr Sarin - who was on the podium after giving his keynote address - and said "we are grateful for your money".
Mr Sarin pulled a face as though he was chewing a wasp.
He then turned to Mr Ahuja, pointing out that Orange may well have 100m subscribers in 23 countries but "we have will have 100m subscribers in six markets, which makes my job easier than his".
He went on to say that having operations in lots of markets creates a massive distraction for management.
He then shocked the audience of senior telecoms executives with a characteristically blunt assessment of the firms acquisition of Wind, saying he wanted to axe a few thousand jobs but the unions would not have any of it. Instead he canned the management...
"I looked at the company, I looked at the management and I said 'if they are making these kind of numbers with this management what if I take over'. Greece was more difficult because the management were good so we were disappointed by that fact."
