Mobile World Congress (MWC) will move forward this year, but according to the organizers, the vaccination will not be necessary to attend when the Barcelona event takes place in June.
“We believe it would be great if the world were vaccinated, but we can not rely on it in 2021; therefore we rely on testing in advance to ensure that our bubble is not just the Fira Gran Via, but also the whole of Barcelona, ”GSMA’s global GSMA CEO John Hoffman told Mobile World Live.
Participants must test negative for COVID-19 within 72 hours after the event, with the test available on site. Furthermore, the organizers of the event claim that they will use some form of ‘technology’ to create a ‘touchless environment’ at the event, which is often at least partially focused on handling smartphones and other devices with touch screens .
Because of these changes, Hoffman said it would be a smaller opportunity than in the past. “COVID requirements will reduce our capacity,” he said. “We are not going to have 110,000 people. With travel restrictions, test capacity and one-way traffic through the exhibition, there is no way.” He does not expect more than 50,000 participants this year.
The Barcelona event usually takes place earlier in the year, but this year it exchanges with its cousin, Shanghai, MWC Shanghai. This means that MWC Shanghai will take place in the spring this year.
The GSMA decided to swap the timing of the events because China is ‘more open’ than other regions with COVID-related travel restrictions. Hoffman also put the case to Mobile World Live that China is a “bubble” with protection against COVID-19, thanks to the country’s efforts to test the virus and track its effects.
MWC Shanghai is a smaller event; it had 60,000 participants in 2019. But this year, the capacity is set at 20,000. “We could have done it virtually,” Hoffman said at the Shanghai conference, “but we could have personally learned the lesson” of later applying to the larger Barcelona show.
The technology conference focusing on mobile devices is expected to focus strongly on the global 5G implementation. Over the past two years, major smartphone makers have released 5G phones, promising to prepare users for a future mobile landscape with radically faster speeds and more reliable services in busy locations. However, the 5G deployment is still in most parts of the world.