New York's Emergency Management Department activated the wireless emergency alert system several times to inform the public of mandatory curfews imposed in response to recent widespread protests, the city told the FCC. Later surveys found problems, the city said Monday in docket 15-91: “The majority of respondents received the messages successfully and within minutes of message issuance. However, consistent with prior surveys, a subset of respondents reported not receiving the message at all and/or receiving it significantly delayed without an identifiable cause.” The city said the pandemic, protests and the “evolving threat environment continue to underscore the need for our nation’s public alerting systems to be improved.”
Cable companies' Wi-Fi-centric mobile virtual network operators continued to have success luring customers from mobile networks operators, with Comcast, Charter and Altice ending Q1 with 3.75 million such subscriptions, GlobalData said Monday. It said much wireless traffic that otherwise would have gone over cellular networks was carried on residential Wi-Fi due to the pandemic, saving those MVNOs cellular usage fees they would have had to pay their network partners. COVID-19 will likely hinder subscriber adds in Q2 for all mobile operators and MVNOs, it said.
Voxx bought a majority of Directed’s automotive aftermarket business for $11 million cash. In a transaction completed Thursday, Voxx bought the aftermarket vehicle remote start and security systems and connected car solutions businesses of Directed and Directed Electronics Canada, Voxx said Monday. The buyer expects to complete an agreement with Nutek, which, in exchange for a 25% stake in the new company, will assume about $4.2 million in trade payables and claims and obligations in Canada for employee retention and real estate leases. The transaction is expected to add $50 million in sales annually, “provided there is no further deterioration in the economy due to the global pandemic,” Voxx said. The brands include Viper, Clifford and Python. Noting the years-long competition between the companies, Voxx CEO Pat Lavelle called the purchase a “natural fit."
Copyright royalty judges’ initial determination in a webcasting rate-setting proceeding is now due April 15, the Library of Congress said Monday, citing COVID-19. The original Dec. 16 due date was postponed four months, given the “scope and severity of the COVID pandemic and its commensurate disruption of the Web V proceeding.”
E-commerce experts say COVID-19 boosts e-commerce, often for the big players (see 2007010054). The winners are well-known retail brands Amazon, Target and Walmart that gained new customers who didn’t shop online before the pandemic or had limited experience, said Kaitlyn Glancy, Flexport general manager-Northeast. “The big names are continuing to get bigger.” Electronics are a beneficiary of pandemic stay-at-home trends, said Glancy, citing spending on TVs and gaming devices. Consumers are also upgrading, she said on her freight transportation company's webcast Wednesday. Consumers are responding to “click and collect” options, where they can choose to have products delivered or picked up in store, said Glancy: Some 87% hope, and expect, the model to exist beyond the pandemic.
That the pandemic showed "we can't imagine a future" with Americans lacking a connection is no reason to regulate broadband service as a utility, USTelecom CEO Jonathan Spalter told C-SPAN's The Communicators scheduled to have been televised this weekend. "To wrap it in the red tape of regulatory strictures, the overhang of bureaucracy that would be required if we were to make it a utility, would take us backward." He's "confident a wise administration that believes in the future of progress in our internet will understand this framework and will continue it." He has seen bipartisan support for keeping the internet open and transparent and for closing the digital divide, and cited predictions it could take $100 billion in government support to extend broadband to all unserved areas. That's adequate, he said, in the context of a broader U.S. infrastructure investment that may approach $1 trillion. Asked about the debate over changes to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, Spalter said: "The issues concerning content moderation are complex and thorny. It’s not our job, it’s not our business, and we’ll be watching with interest as these discussions take place."
The next two to three years will be tough for the satellite communications industry, with COVID-19 stalling the aeronautical connectivity market and interrupting the growth curve of the backhaul market, Northern Sky Research analyst Lluc Palerm blogged Wednesday. There's still much long-term value in satcom, with opportunities in "extraordinarily large" addressable markets like mobility, backhaul and consumer broadband, he said. Various bankruptcies were bound to occur even without the pandemic, and the convergence of such issues as cheaper capacity, small cells and better performing ground systems will unlock markets, it said.
The number of U.S. households that bought consumer tech during the 12th week of the COVID-19 pandemic was down slightly from June 12-14, said CTA’s COVID-19 tracker Wednesday. Use of streaming video services (52% of U.S. households), live TV services (22%) and gaming livestream services (13%) fell. “With the start of summer, the dip we are seeing in tech purchase and content consumption is likely due to people getting outside more and families” vacationing, said CTA. “Households with people under the age of 35 are driving purchases of tech.” More than half had bought at least one device in the past week, it said after asking 1,000 homes online, June 26-28.
Warehouse staffing, consumer expectations for delivery and the Trade Act Section 301 tariffs on Chinese goods are among challenges Sonos is juggling as the company ratchets up e-commerce amid the novel coronavirus, said John Hills, senior manager-logistics, America. Hills told a webinar hosted by freight logistics company Flexport that during the pandemic, which slammed brick-and-mortar sales worldwide, Sonos is “not only dealing with the impact of COVID, we’re still navigating some of the waters with these 301 tariffs” imposed last year by the Trump administration on goods imported from China. Higher tariffs led Sonos to steer production of most U.S.-bound goods to Malaysia. Sonos CEO Patrick Spence highlighted a spike in direct-to-consumer sales (D2C) in April when consumers turned to e-commerce to buy goods they couldn’t get when stores temporarily closed. More people are required to move 1,500 units in a D2C model vs. a “handful” of pallets destined for one retailer, Hills said Wednesday. Forecasting D2C sales fluctuations can be unpredictable, said the executive: “It’s much more challenging to capture spikes in demand for D2C than it is for B2B.” An online article or blog can drive a surge, or a successful promotion can produce an unexpected order spike, he said. Sonos is also competing with big box retailers that have bigger warehouse staffing needs due to the pandemic-fueled jump in e-commerce business. FedEx also is getting more e-commerce consumer interest (see 2007010052).
The pandemic “accelerated” consumer e-commerce adoption, said Brie Carere, FedEx executive vice president-chief marketing and communications officer, on a fiscal Q4 call Tuesday. E-commerce increased to 27% of U.S. retail in April, from 16% in calendar 2019, partly because “total retail contracted” during coronavirus lockdowns, she said. FedEx expects e-commerce as a percentage of retail will stay “elevated,” said Carere. “This shift has left an indelible mark on the retail industry, causing the bankruptcy of some chains that have been around for decades.” E-commerce helped retailers “with a strong omnichannel strategy flourish,” she said. “Surging” e-commerce sales from large retail customers drove a “sizable mix shift” to direct-to-consumer residential volume from commercial business-to-business transactions in Q4 ended May 31, said Carere. U.S. residential volume was 72% of revenue in the quarter compared with 56% a year earlier, she said. Carere thinks the strong shift to e-commerce was “structural,” not temporary: “We have seen a huge uptick in the categories that people are willing to purchase online.” FedEx saw that trend develop pre-COVID, “but it has accelerated when you think about things like furniture, large packages, high-value electronics,” she said. COVID-19 brought a “huge change in who is buying online,” especially 65-and-older consumers, she said. “I do not anticipate that these buying behaviors will revert back.” Wednesday, the stock closed up 12% at $156.66.