Mobile World Congress is the biggest telco conference of the year, worldwide. Maybe there’s a bigger one in China but if there is I don’t know about it.
This is a prudent measure in the face of a potential health crisis. It’s not a good idea for 100K+ people from all over the world to fly to a central location, spend a week sneezing on each other in an enclosed conference center, with their immune systems compromised due to short-sleeping, and then disperse to their homes all over the world again.
Shoot, half the time I go to MWC I come home with a bad cold or the flu, and that’s in years without coronavirus. (Not last year though. Last year I’m pretty sure it was food poisoning. 72 hours of not fun!).
The biggest telco vendors and their customers had already pulled out of the show so this next step is not surprising.
