Madrid
The pressure was too strong on the GSMA, the organizing association of the Mobile World Congress (MWC). In the day of Wednesday, the new defections of big European operators like Deutsche Telekom and Vodafone weakened even more the behavior of the MWC the great mass of the telephony expected in Barcelona from February 24 to 27. During the day, the city of Barcelona and the Spanish authorities did everything to prevent the cancellation of this event which brings together nearly 110,000 participants in the city. But, at the end of a crisis meeting that took place by telephone, with the participation of Orange, who chairs the GSMA, the decision was made. The world's largest telecoms fair is canceled due to the coronavirus epidemic.
In one week, around thirty large groups had defected for fear of the contagion of the virus with the arrival of many Chinese companies.
After the manufacturers (Sony, Umdigi or Vivio), network specialists (Cisco, Ericsson, Nokia) and web giants (Amazon and Facebook), the telecom operators themselves, the main promoters of the event, began to default. The Japanese NTT Docomo was the first to announce backtrack, it was followed by the American AT&T, the British Vodafone, the German Deutsche Telekom. All these big names are among the biggest customers of the show.
Read also: Coronavirus: flood of cancellations at the high mass of telecoms
A very high bill
This cancellation will have a considerable cost. At the price of the rental of the pavilions - more than 1000 euros per square meter, it is more than 400 million euros that the organizers should reimburse to the participants. Not including flight reservations, hotel nights and stand set-up, as well as tickets, billed from 800 to 5,000 euros. If the companies that canceled their arrival by themselves had to pay the bill, the others would try to recover the costs incurred in vain. As the health emergency has not been declared by either the Spanish government or the World Health Organization (WHO), it is difficult to see what reason of force majeure could be alleged by GSMA to seek compensation from its insurers.
If the organizers were waiting for an announcement from the Spanish authorities to justify their decision or convince the insurance companies, they were
disappointed. Wednesday afternoon, the Spanish Minister of Health, Salvador Illa, and the Catalan regional Minister, Alba Vergés, held a press conference in which they seemed to dissociate themselves preventively from the cancellation. In Spanish, Catalan and English, the two politicians alternated to deny the existence of a medical or scientific basis justifying such a drastic measure. He thus indicated that "there is no public health reason for taking any additional measures concerning any event in Barcelona, Catalonia or Spain". For his part, Alba Vergés clarified that if the organizers "freely decide to take measures, we must respect it, but we have given them all the information from health experts". Spain has detected 38 suspected cases of coronavirus, of which only two were positive, one on the Balearic Islands and the other in the Canaries. Neither shows symptoms.
