Barcelona’s Mobile World Congress cleared to go ahead in person

STOCKHOLM: The Mobile World Congress (MWC), the telecoms industry’s biggest annual gathering, can go ahead as planned after Spanish authorities approved its health and safety plan, its organisers said on Thursday.

MWC, which will be one of the first big technology conferences staged in Europe since the start of the pandemic, is scheduled to run from June 28 to July 1 in Barcelona. The 2020 edition was cancelled due to the coronavirus pandemic.

“When we speak to the exhibitors, some are very hesitant, some are saying we are not coming as we have a travel policy, and some are saying that we normally send 250 people, we are just going to send five,” Mats Granryd, director general of the GSMA, said in an interview.