© Reuters. FILE PHOTO: Folks attend a Keynote convention throughout GSMA’s 2022 Cell World Congress (MWC), in Barcelona, Spain February 28, 2022. REUTERS/Albert Gea
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By Joan Faus and Supantha Mukherjee
BARCELONA (Reuters) – Geopolitics and expertise intertwined on the Cell World Congress this week as greater than 61,000 individuals gathered within the Spanish metropolis of Barcelona at the same time as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine overshadowed one of many pandemic’s most-attended conferences.
GSMA, the organiser of the telecoms trade’s four-day greatest annual gathering, condemned Moscow’s actions and barred the Russian pavilion.
Earlier than the beginning of the congress, it had mentioned a handful of Russian corporations and other people can be banned due to sanctions, however declined to specify what number of didn’t come past saying the influence was minimal.
In-person conferences worldwide got here to a halt at first of the pandemic and are solely slowing selecting up once more. Final 12 months’s MWC solely drew about 20,000 attendees, a far cry from 110,000 in 2019. Different occasions resembling CES in Las Vegas attracted round 45,000 attendees earlier this 12 months, down from 200,000 earlier than the pandemic.
The variety of attendees at this 12 months’s MWC exceeded expectations.
“I believe the extent of enthusiasm has by no means been higher, the necessity of getting this present has by no means been higher,” Mats Granryd, director basic of organizer GSMA instructed Reuters.
He mentioned the pandemic has made individuals admire the advantages of socialising at massive conferences, seen in packed networking terraces throughout the sprawling congress grounds.
Prime executives of firms from greater than 100 nations took the stage to sentence Russia’s invasion, announce a halt to their Russia operations and element assist for native workers.
Software program writer Kaspersky Labs was one of many Russian firms current, whereas Ukraine’s greatest cellular operator Veon was additionally there.
Some attendees wore ribbons in Ukraine’s nationwide colors, handed out by protesters who gathered on the entrance holding an indication that learn “Reduce Russia off, no tech for aggressor”.
However on the crowded flooring of the occasion, telecom buzzwords resembling 5G and edge computing have been nonetheless the most-discussed subjects.
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