The Mobile World Congress (MWC), telecoms industry’s biggest annual gathering, is hoping to attract about 50,000 attendees in the Spanish city of Barcelona, making it one of the biggest physical events since the start of the pandemic.
Online conferences have become the norm for the past two years, boosting the valuations of conferencing companies such as Zoom (ZM.O) and Hopin, but as the pandemic recedes the appetite for doing business in person is slowing recovering.
This year top executives from Nokia, Ericsson, Amazon and Cisco have confirmed their attendance at the conference after a gap of two years.
MWC was one of the first events to be cancelled in 2020 as COVID-19 started to sweep across the world. Normally held in February, in 2021 it was switched to June and a cut-size version.
A vaccine certificate is enough this year to attend MWC, while last year an attendee had to get tested at the gates of the venue to gain entry. There will be no-one at the venue this year reminding attendees to stick to social distancing.
The event usually provides a significant boost to Barcelona’s economy, with GSMA estimating it brought $500 million to the city in 2019.
According to reuter
