The General Director of the GSMA, Mats Granryd, during the presentation of the Mobile World Congress this Thursday in Barcelona.Quique García (EFE)
Barcelona's conference program will be full of events from now on, first with Integrated Systems Europe (between January 30th and February 2nd) and then with the Mobile World Congress (MWC), taking place from February 26th to 29th. And congressmen arriving in the Catalan capital may not know that Catalonia has been hit by a drought for 39 months and that water consumption needs to be reduced. The organizers of the MWC, who opened the congress this Thursday by explaining the main developments, announced that they will carry out an awareness campaign about the drought among the participants, which according to their forecasts will number around 95,000 people. The business and technology event will bring back Asian companies and members of Congress – who have come in smaller numbers in recent years due to pandemic restrictions – and will focus more on technology debates and connectivity platforms and solutions than the events themselves.
Although most of the congressmen's water use will likely come from hotels, MWC organizers have said they are concerned about that issue as well. “I come from Sweden and we have a lot more water there than we need. “Many people coming from abroad will not know that there is a drought here,” said Mats Granryd, the director general of GSMA, the mobile industry association that is organizing the congress. So, on the one hand, the organization will launch awareness campaigns for participants and, on the other hand, the Fira de Barcelona, which is responsible for the facilities where the MWC takes place, has prepared a protocol to reduce water consumption: the fountain and the ponds on the outdoor taps will be closed and drained, all taps will be checked to ensure there are no leaks and to reduce the time they open automatically, and the installation of fountains fed from the water supply network , in Congress was excluded.
The MWC is the big annual business event in Barcelona, because of the number of visitors – last year 88,500 came, in 2019 a record of 109,000 was reached – and because of the years that it has been held in the Catalan capital: This edition bears the number 18. “When we started there was talk of 3G, it was only done in Montjuïc and was entirely dedicated to infrastructure, with antennas, controllers and mobile phones.” “Now we are focusing on the platforms,” explained Granryd, who gave the presentation at the old Estrella Damm factory without John Hoffman, the charismatic organizer of the convention who was always the visible face and was absent this time for personal reasons.
For years, the part dedicated to mobile devices has been reduced and Congress has turned to the uses and debates of technology: applications, platforms, benefits for health and education or artificial intelligence. “It’s much more than just mobile phones,” said Granryd, accompanied by GSMA marketing director Lara Dewar. The organization has not given any information about what staff it will hire or what economic impact this congress will have on the city, but in the previous edition it was 461 million euros, according to employers' calculations.
This year the MWC brings together more than 2,400 exhibiting companies and around 1,100 speakers, spread over 260 sessions. The companies include Amazon Web Services, Google, IBM, Huawei, Meta, Microsoft, Samsung and T-Mobile. Some of them are of Asian origin and are coming for the first time, such as China Telecom and the Japanese KDDI, among others. The MWC will strengthen the 4YFN Entrepreneurship Fair by giving it an additional floor for emerging companies to set up their stands and show their innovations, as well as for professionals such as engineers and computer scientists with an area organized by Mobile called Talent Arena World Capital Foundation.
Speakers at the congress include the CEO of Telefónica, José María Álvarez-Pallete, the CEO of Vodafone, Margherita della Valle, the vice president of Microsoft, Brad Smith, the president of Dell Technologies, Michael Dell, or the co-founder and CEO by Google DeepMind, Demis Hassabis.
Follow all information Business And Business on Facebook and Xor in our weekly newsletter
The five-day agenda
The most important business quotes of the day, with the keys and context to understand their significance.
RECEIVE IT IN YOUR EMAIL