Telefonica brings €7.8 million and a downtown building to Barcelona’s Mobile World Capital

Barcelona (ACN).- On Tuesday, Telefonica and Barcelona City Council signed a partnership agreement by which the Spanish telecommunication giant donates €7.8 million and allows the use of a strategic building for the Mobile World Capital project. Telefonica will allow MWCapital to use 1,800 square metres of the company’s Plaça Calunya building to host the Mobile World Centre. This facility will show the wider public the latest developments of the cell phone and related industries. It will open its doors before the next Mobile World Congress, which takes place in Barcelona and is the main trade fair and expert conference at world level for the mobile industries. Furthermore, the MWCapital project works to organise related events through the year, such as the Mobile World Festival and the activities at the Plaça Catalunya centre. It also works to make Barcelona the world’s main hub for the mobile industries in its own right, by fostering related experimental projects to be developed in the city or by placing a regulator authority at world level for these industries in the Catalan capital. At least until 2018, Barcelona will be hosting the Mobile World Congress, which has been organised in the Catalan capital every year since 2006 by GSMA. The next edition will take place between 25^th and 28^th of February 2013, in the Gran Via venues of Fira de Barcelona.

On Tuesday, the Mayor of Barcelona and President of the Mobile World Capital Foundation, Xavier Trias, and the President of Telefonica, César Alierta, signed, in the Catalan capital, the partnership agreement by which the telecommunications multinational will give €7.8 million to the project. In addition, the partnership agreement also includes the temporary cession of 1,800 square metres of Telefonica’s Plaça Catalunya building to host the Mobile World Centre. This possibility had already been unveiled in the last GSMA Mobile World Congress and was confirmed by the company a few months later. These projects foster Barcelona’s position as one of the world’s main hubs for the cell phone and related industries.

Barcelona’s Mayor thanked Telefonica for its “incalculable support” to the Mobile World Capital project. Trias has also emphasised the importance of having the Mobile World Centre located in such a strategic position, at the heart of Barcelona’s downtown, in Plaça Catalunya. Trias also explained that the project does not rule out having another building in Barcelona’s technological district 22@, made up of renewed textile and old machinery factories.

The Mobile World Centre to open its doors in February

The work on Telefonica’s building has already started and it is foreseen that the Mobile World Centre will be able to open its doors before the cell phone industries’ main congress kicks off on 25^th February. After the congress, the centre will become a main window and meeting point to know the last developments of the industry. The centre will share the building with a Telefonica shop.

“Open to all companies”

However, Trias emphasised that the Mobile World Capital “is open to all the companies”. In fact, Trias underlined that “other companies not only should participate in the project but they have to participate in it”. In addition, César Alierta also stated that he hoped “to collaborate with other operators” to make the MWCapital project bigger.

Alierta explained that Telefonica’s “involvement” with the project made Barcelona the world capital of the mobile phone and related industries. Alierta explained that the €7.8 million donated to the project will be used “to contribute towards fostering entrepreneurship in the sector of mobility technologies and to consolidate existing projects”.