Coronavirus Kills MWC Barcelona

GSMA has canceled its flagship MWC Barcelona event for the first time in the show’s 33-year history citing ongoing concerns over possible spread of the coronavirus. The event was set to get underway on Feb. 24, but a wave of cancellations by network operators and vendors became too much for the event organizers to overcome.

MWC Barcelona was ultimately scrapped due to growing concerns over potential exposure to the coronavirus, which was first detected about six weeks ago in Wuhan, China. It has since spread to more than 45,000 people and claimed at least 1,100 lives, according to the latest figures provided by health officials.

The industry association maintained as recently as Sunday that the show would go on, but multiple large and omnipresent companies have since abandoned plans to attend and showcase news at the event. At least 20 companies pulled out of the event earlier today, including Vodafone, Deutsche Telekom, BT, Nokia, and Samsung Networks.

Pressure has been mounting on GSMA for the last week. LG was the first major vendor to cancel plans on Feb. 5 and many others have followed in kind, including Amazon, Ericsson, Nvidia, Sony, NTT DoCoMo, AT&T, Sprint, Intel, Cisco, Facebook, Rakuten, and others. All cited concerns over the spread of the coronavirus at MWC Barcelona.

“With due regard to the safe and healthy environment in Barcelona and the host country today, the GSMA has cancelled MWC Barcelona 2020 because the global concern regarding the coronavirus outbreak, travel concern, and other circumstances make it impossible for GSMA to hold the event,” GSMA CEO John Hoffman wrote in a statement.

This would have been Barcelona’s 15th consecutive year holding the event, and the cancellation has been estimated to cost the city about $500 million in economic activity. The show was expected to meet or exceed the 109,000 attendees it hosted at last year’s event.―SDX Central