(Adds Telefonica reaction)
By Jordi Rubio, Douglas Busvine and Mathieu Rosemain
BARCELONA/BERLIN/PARIS, Feb 12 (Reuters) - The Mobile World
Congress (MWC), the annual telecoms industry gathering that
draws more than 100,000 visitors to Barcelona, was cancelled on
Wednesday after a mass exodus by exhibitors due to fears over
the coronavirus outbreak.
Bowing to the inevitable, the GSMA telecoms association that
hosts the get-together said it had cancelled the Feb. 24-27
event despite assurances from local and national health
officials that it would have been safe to hold it.
"The GSMA has cancelled MWC Barcelona 2020 because the
global concern regarding the coronavirus outbreak, travel
concern and other circumstances, make it impossible for the GSMA
to hold the event,” John Hoffman, the CEO of organiser GSMA,
said in a statement.
The announcement followed a crisis meeting of the GSMA
board, after its hand was forced by the pullout of anchor
European members including Deutsche Telekom, Vodafone
, BT and Nokia.
Spain's Telefonica, one of the biggest telecom operators not
to have announced it was pulling out, said on Wednesday evening
it "understands the GSMA's decision to cancel the Mobile World
Congress 2020 due to the situation generated by coronavirus."
It said it would always support Barcelona as host city of
the Mobile World Congress.
Barcelona's mayor, Ada Colau, said earlier she wanted to
send a "message of calm," insisting the city was ready to host
the event, while Spanish health officials reiterated that there
was no reason to call off MWC.
The World Health Organisation, a UN agency leading the
coronavirus crisis response, had also called in vain for calm.
“There is no evidence at present to suggest that there is
community spread outside China, so WHO is not currently
requesting that large gatherings are cancelled," WHO spokesman
Tarik Jasarevic told Reuters in Geneva.
That failed, however, to alleviate concerns among major
exhibitors that the precautions would be insufficient to halt
the virus, which has spread beyond China's borders to two dozen
countries.
"To bring people together and connect them: That is what
Telekom stands for. This is also what the Mobile World Congress,
the 'class reunion' of our industry, stands for," Deutsche
Telekom CEO Tim Hoettges posted on LinkedIn.
But he said that large gatherings of people with many
international guests posed a particular risk: "To take this risk
would be irresponsible."
The Chinese contingent at MWC has numbered 5,000-6,000 in
recent years, making the event particularly vulnerable given the
outbreak of the virus that has killed more than 1,100 people on
the Chinese mainland.
The GSMA said the host cities and partners respected and
understood its decision, adding that they would "continue to be
working in unison" towards staging next year's event.
Hoffman and Colau are to hold a joint press conference on
Thursday.
Due to the sheer scale of MWC, with delegates packing out
Barcelona's hotels and restaurants and causing the city's trade
fair grounds to burst at the seams, postponement was never a
realistic option, sources said.
ON THE HOOK
A final decision was made harder by the terms under which
any events insurance taken out by the GSMA would pay out,
industry sources and insurance experts said. This would be
unlikely to kick in unless restrictions are imposed on public
gatherings in the country on health grounds.
"Where there is no ban and businesses make their own
commercial decision, I cannot see the market paying out," Edel
Ryan, who is on the Special Risks team at broker Marsh JLT
Specialty, said before the GSMA's decision.
Major Chinese exhibitors, led by Huawei, had stuck
to plans to attend to the very last, ordering at-risk staff to
isolate themselves in advance and drafting in replacements from
elsewhere to run event stands and host clients.
The GSMA had banned attendees from China's Hubei province,
where the coronavirus outbreak began, and required others to
prove that they had been outside the country for at least two
weeks prior to the event.
Coronavirus has proved to be contagious even when people who
have caught it are asymptomatic, meaning that people attending
might not even realise that they could infect others at MWC.
Tracking the meetings and movements across the Fira trade
grounds and the city of Barcelona of anyone who later tests
positive would be a difficult task.
(Writing by Douglas Busvine, Additional reporting by Jessica
Jones, Isla Binnie, Supantha Mukherjee, Joan Faus, Can Sezer,
Tarmo Virki, Stephanie Nebehay, Carolyn Cohn and Noor Zainab
Hussein; editing by Chizu Nomiyama, Kirsten Donovan and Leslie
Adler)
Vodafone (VOD)
BT (BT.A)
