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| GSMA postpones MWC 2021 to late June 2021 |
Organizers of the Mobile World Congress, the biggest annual event in the telecom industry, said today (Wednesday) that they will postpone the event until the end of next June (MWC 2021) so that it can stand safely despite the Coronavirus pandemic.
The Mobile World Congress (MWC 2021) was originally scheduled to take place in early March and will be held from June 28 to July 1, 2021 in Barcelona, Spain.
This year's conference was originally scheduled to take place in Barcelona from February 24-27. It usually attracted more than 100,000 participants from 200 countries but was canceled due to the spread of the virus worldwide.
The cancellation decision was made by LG, Ericsson, Nvidia, Intel, Vivo, Sony, Amazon, Cisco, Facebook, Vodafone, Deutsche Telekom (ZTE), (NTT Docomo), (BT), (HMD), (Orange)) and (Sprint) after publishing several companies.
The event will provide partnership, transaction and product launch opportunities to thousands of people and be face-to-face. However, the number of participants will drop to less than the 110,000 delegates who usually meet in the Catalan capital.
"It's going to be physical, it's going to be face-to-face, but it's going to have a bigger virtual component," GSMA General Manager Mats Granried, who moderated the meeting, said.
"Events attended by more than 110,000 people are less fun, but attracting the right people is more fun," he added.
After consulting with the Board of Directors and the major exhibitors, we have made a cautious decision to postpone the exhibitors, participants, employees, Barcelona, to February (MWC 2021) Shanghai and June (MWC 2021) Barcelona. Granrid said human health and safety are of the utmost importance.
Delay is buying time to strengthen health precautions. Granrid hopes to have rapid (COVID-19) testing by next summer and could also provide vaccines currently in development.
GSMA has also committed to bringing the Chinese version of the Mobile World Congress, which will be held in Shanghai from 23-25 February 2021, to the conference, which equates to an exchange of the schedule with major events in Barcelona.
The GSMA represents 750 operators and 350 other companies in the global mobile device industry and has hosted the Mobile World Congress (MWC) since its first event in 2006.
The MWC is usually held annually in Barcelona, the capital of Catalonia, and it has a major economic impact on the city. It provides income of $ 500 million to the local economy and creates 14,100 part-time jobs.