Mobile World Congress is Postponed to Late June 2021
The managers of the Mobile World Congress, the telecoms industry’s largest yearly meeting, said on Wednesday they were suspending next year’s occasion too late June to make it likely to organize securely despite the coronavirus pandemic.
MWC 2021, initially arranged for initial March, will now be organized in Barcelona, Spain, from June 28 to July 1. This year’s congress was blocked at the last minute as the virus blowout across the globe.
The occasion, which syndicates an extravagant trade show with a turmoil of executive networking, will be face to face. Still, presence will be decreasing from the 110,000 who customarily converge in the Catalan capital as winter turns to spring.
“It’s going to be corporal. It’s going to be face to face. But it’s going to have a better computer-generated constituent,” said Mats Granryd, director-general of the GSMA, the industry association that congregations the congress.
“Having 110,000-plus events is less fascinating – getting the right people is more stimulating,” he told Reuters in a meeting.
The congress has formerly given a $500 million boost to the local economy – and improvement truly needed as rates of infection ascend. The disappointment to travel and tourism from the pandemic has been disturbing, with only three among ten hotels now open in Barcelona.
The GSMA, which totals 750 operators and 400 more corporations in the broader business as associates, dented this year’s event after evacuation by exhibitioners. Travel, auto, and technology displays rapidly followed, making managers adjust to online formats.
In spite of initial disapproval, the lobby group moderated its criticizers by offering repayments and credits to upcoming shows. It has dedicated to possessing the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona at least until 2024.
Seventy-eight of the top-100 exhibitioners had by now signed up for next year, the GSMA’s Granryd said, an amount that could range the eighties after the event got pushed back to the Mediterranean summer.
The postponement pursues to buy time to reinforce sanitation measures around a “touchless” event that, in one social distancing feature, will substitute tickets with fees using facial recognition technology.
Granryd articulated hope that, by next summer, it will be possible for representatives to take speedy COVID-19 tests at their hotel before heading to the happening. He also stated assurance that telecoms managers would have admittance to vaccines, now under expansion, once they become accessible.
The GSMA said it would also change up the Chinese edition of next year’s Mobile World Congress, held in Shanghai, to Feb. 23-25 in what sums to a calendar switch with the main occasion in Barcelona.
