Global System for Mobile Communication, commonly referred to as GSMA, has come up with the idea of making the Mobile World Congress (MWC), which is scheduled to hold between June 28th and July 1st in Barcelona, a walk-in event.
Keeping in mind the present COVID-19 restrictions, it is needless to say that a handful of tech giants, including Sony, Oracle, Nokia, Ericsson have decided to back off from this year’s MWC. The list now includes Google, too.
Since the COVID outbreak has put a toll on the normative way of life, Google has a statement that it will not be attending this year’s edition of MWC. Although Google is refraining from this year’s MWC, it will (Google) continue to work and support GSMA following a zero contact mode of communication. Google further added that it would continue to attend Mobile World Congress (MWC) from 2022 onwards.
COVID-19 protocols have restricted travel worldwide, and Google has enlisted this as the sole reason behind their backing off. Although the COVID-19 protocols and restrictions have forced Google to refrain from the event, the tech giant has made it clear that it will continue to work together with the Global System for Mobile Communication (GSMA). Google also announced that it will continue to help its partners through virtual events and has promised to attend the next year’s MWC.
As a measure for the increasing COVID-19 cases, GSMA has taken safety measures that reduce the number of attendees from 100,000 to 50,000. It has also made it mandatory to carry a COVID negative report (which must be done 72hours before the arrival of the attendee at the event) for the attendees.
Apart from these primary measurements, zero contact registration process, mandatory masks, thorough and regular sanitization of all the equipment which are a part of the event.
However, the measures taken by GSMA might have failed to satisfy the participants due to which the list of backed off companies is rising with each passing day.
