The great and good of the world of mobile communications have come to their annual Jamboree in Barcelona, all equipped with this year’s technology: a negative COVID-19 test, an FFP2 face mask and a digital badge for contact-tracing. More than 30,000 visitors from 143 countries are ready to stream in the Catalan city for the three-day Mobile World Congress, or MWC, which begins Monday – and will each have to pass through a massive testing area with 80 booths.
While this attendance is a far cry from the 100,000-plus crowds in years past, it is still encouraging for the organisers, the global mobile industry body GSMA. It was forced to ax the 2020 event as the pandemic spread, and fears that few would show up this week. “My biggest concern was that … our exhibitors would say in unison ‘we’re not coming’ – but that didn’t happen,” said GSMA director general Mats Granried, which saw a 40 percent drop after last year’s cancellation. After the layoff, there was a huge loss. of its employees. “These different types are going to be here for the foreseeable future, and we just have to start living with it.”
It has been a mixed picture among the big names of the industry. The likes of Telefonica, Orange, Huawei, Lenovo, Vodafone are visible; But Ericsson, Nokia and Samsung are staying away. The industry hopes this year’s event, split between physical, virtual and hybrid activities, will provide a blueprint for future business gatherings. In a warm welcome at Barcelona’s La Boqueria market on Sunday, MWC guests and stakeholders eagerly greeted each other with elbows or fists, eager to call off a year of isolation, lockdown and video-conferencing.
“It (MWC) marks a before and after,” Carme Artigas, the Spanish government’s head of digitization and AI, said at lunchtime. “This is an early shot for us to restart the growth of our economy.” However, the scale of the test operation is difficult. On Saturday alone, 10,000 people were tested inside the sprawling Fira venue that hosts MWC, as preparations were being made for the event – a process that Granryd described as “smooth.” “We’re showing the world that you can actually have these events, and you can keep them safe, and you can actually do business again and see each other,” Granreed said.
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