• It’s day 1 of #MWC22
• The main halls are thronging
• Attendees talk of a late rush to attend
• The feeling is positive and it’s a meeting frenzy

BARCELONA – Mobile World Congress 2022 – You could almost touch the sense of relief this morning on the Fira show floor in Barcelona as tens of thousands of attendees flooded into MWC22 and brought a hint of pre-Covid-type networking back to the global telecoms industry.

This isn’t an official tally of attendees, I should note – this is my guesstimate based on the volume of people thronging through the main halls at the show. It is certainly not like 2019, when trying to walk down the central aisle of Hall 3 was like trying to get on a subway train in rush hour – there is room to manoeuvre on this year’s show floor but you need to keep your wits about you because it is busy. Properly busy.

And it seems quite a bit of this can be put down a late rush: Anecdotal evidence from a number of people I spoke to suggests that quite a few people made a late decision to make the trip to Barcelona, putting a welcome but unexpected strain on some hotels. 

This will all, of course, be a relief to the GSMA, the show’s organizer, but it will mainly be a relief to the companies and people who have come here to do business, meet partners, customers and friends, and, perhaps most importantly of all, meet new contacts. 

And everyone here seems very glad to be back – there’s a positive buzz in the air on the Fira floor as people rush from meeting to meeting, demo to demo -- especially the ones with a XR/metaverse or automobile edge. 

Let’s hope that, after the dust has settled, the attendees and the industry are still feeling as good about it all.

  - Ray Le Maistre, Editorial Director, TelecomTV