GSM Association Rob Conway opened the Mobile World Congress proper in Barcelona this morning by putting the frights up internet users. The internet is littered with popups, spam and illicit content.  The sex exploitation of children has been a problem on the fixed internet - but we can do something to prevent this in the mobile world.” His antidote? The Mobile Alliance against Child Sexual Abuse Content, unveiled yesterday by GSMA and Europe’s telecoms commissioner Vivianne Reding (release).

Operators that are alliance members will work together and share information in order to block sites hosting material depicting child sex abuse, as determined by “an appropriate agency” in national jurisdictions. Members are Hutchison, mobilkom, Orange, Telecom Italia, Telefonica/O2, Telenor, TeliaSonera, T-Mobile, Vodafone (NYSE: VOD) and dotMobi. Conway also warned: “The internet world has no real quality of service and viruses abound.” So he said operators are teaming on an “IP exchange” to guarantee reliability of data transfer.