Massachusetts supported Colorado’s request to waive a restriction on using E-rate funding “off-campus.” Waiving the rule “would help mitigate the harms to our education system that the pandemic has caused” by allowing schools and libraries to extend broadband to unserved students who must learn remotely, the Massachusetts Department of Telecommunications and Cable wrote Thursday in docket 13-184. The FCC also should waive parts of the program’s application procedures and competitive bidding requirements, the MDTC said.

A disappointing back-to-school season has been “elongated,” said ODP CEO Gerry Smith on a quarterly call Thursday (see Q3 materials here). The former Office Depot expects sales that didn’t materialize in the traditional BTS season to stretch into Q4 and Q1, Smith said, hoping the 53% of students currently learning from home due to the COVID-19 pandemic will go back to the classroom in coming months and need supplies. ODP had a 9% Q3 revenue drop to $2.5 billion, but e-commerce sales grew 20% as the company positioned itself as a source for home office and learn-from-home products. Shares closed up 18% at $24.90. Chief Financial Officer Anthony Scaglione highlighted adjacent categories -- cleaning and break room, personal protective equipment, technology, furniture, and copy and print -- which made up 47% of business solutions division revenue. Buy online, pick up in store fulfillment rose 82%, said Scaglione.

Though the proportion of New Yorkers working in physical offices is in the “teens,” the “return to normalcy will be the order of the day in months, not in years,” said Vornado Realty Trust CEO Steven Roth on a Q3 call Wednesday. The company owns major commercial buildings in Manhattan, including One Penn Plaza next to Penn Station and Madison Square Garden and the adjacent Farley Building, where Facebook will lease 730,000 square feet in Q1, said Roth. “We are hearing from all our tenants that Zoom fatigue is real, productivity is low and CEOs want their employees back in the office,” he said. “That will take some time.” The landlord believes “there will be marginal work from home” and the office “will be the main place where work, creativity, growth and business is conducted.”

Revenue in Alibaba’s fiscal Q2, ended Sept. 30, jumped 30% from a year earlier on “deeper adoption” of the platform, accelerated by COVID-19 and “the rapid economic recovery in China,” said CEO Daniel Zhang on a Thursday investor call. “Digitalization is now universally recognized as a way forward in the post-pandemic world.” Global Shopping Festival, Alibaba’s equivalent of Amazon Prime Day, used to be a 24-hour event but this year was expanded into an 11-day marathon in two “shopping windows,” he said. The first ran Nov. 1-3; the second starts Nov. 11 and runs for eight days, he said. “We want to give consumers more time to browse and get the deal while easing pressure on the logistic infrastructure. This helps consumers receive their package sooner and enjoy a better shopping experience. Our merchants will also benefit from more exposure and selling opportunities.” On the festival's first day, more than 100 brands each surpassed sales of 100 million Chinese yuan ($15.1 million) “within the first 111 minutes,” and 357 new brands “on our platform became the top sellers in their respective subcategories,” he said.

The Nebraska Public Service Commission extended through 2020 a $1 million broadband adoption program for low-income families during the pandemic (see 2004220035), it said Thursday: During the initial program, which ran mid-March to June, the commission OK’d $205,000 for about 2,000 consumers.

Lenovo plans to introduce its first 5G Chromebook in the second half next year at the premium tier of the laptop space, said Chief Operating Officer Gianfranco Lanci on a fiscal Q2 call Tuesday. “I'm not afraid of any deterioration of the average selling price of Chromebook.” Competition in the Chromebook segment is limited to “four to five players,” he said. “I don't see additional players coming.” Lenovo had $10 to $20 "improvement" in Chromebook ASPs the past three quarters, he said. Chromebook demand for remote work and learning soared during the pandemic (see 2009110020). PCs and tablets “are now one device per person” in the “new normal” of COVID-19, said CEO Yuanqing Yang. Lenovo projects total PC market will grow by about 25 million units globally this year from 2019 and will “reach very close to 300 million units” in 2020, he said. The forecast is for 7% growth in 2021 PC demand, said Lanci. There’s a “dynamic shift” in PC demand that will “continue to create tailwinds for e-learning, work from home, play from home, cloud infrastructure and 5G,” said Chief Financial Officer Wai Ming: “We are optimistic that these long-term structural trends could enlarge the addressable market” for PCs and cloud infrastructure products, plus speed deployment of 5G services.

Apple told the FCC external testing of its hybridized emergency location vertical technology may not start until April because of the pandemic. CTIA indicated z-axis testing “can only begin once it is safe to do so and access to required testing locations becomes available,” said a filing posted Wednesday in docket 07-114.

ABI Research expects COVID-19 will curb 8K TV consumer adoption through 2021, when 8K sets will still be only 1% of global flat-panel TV shipments. “There had been much anticipation of 8K TV market growth” amid broadcast content scheduled for the Tokyo Olympics, it reported Tuesday. The event’s postponement, plus the economic downturn, “has resulted in low 8K TV unit shipments in 2020,” it said: Though 8K TV price points declined in the past year, most are still expensive, and that will combine with lack of content to delay 8K TV adoption.

With the pandemic showing “no signs of slowing,” cash use is declining, said PayPal CEO Dan Schulman on a Q3 call: “Digitization of the global economy, combined with the rise of digital wallets, will drive our growth over the next decade.” Payment volume grew a record 36%, he said Monday. Transactions were just over $4 billion, a record and up 30% from the 2019 quarter, he said. The platform added 15.2 million “net new actives”, (NNAs) its second highest after Q2's 21.3 million, said Schulman. PayPal gained more than 1.5 million new merchants, more than twice the pre-coronavirus rate, he said. “We now have 28 million merchants on our platform. We ended Q3 with 361 million active accounts, and we remain on track to end the year with a record 70 million NNAs.” COVID-19 caused “a step change in e-commerce penetration this year,” said Chief Financial Officer John Rainey: “We expect there to be a deep and permanent change to commerce and consumer behavior, both in the U.S. and internationally.”

Q1 events are “certainly at risk” given state-level restrictions and the potential for venue closings due to COVID-19 government restrictions and venue takeovers, said Emerald interim CEO Brian Field. “We have already canceled some of our first quarter events and postponed others.” That includes the Kitchen + Bath Business Industry Show, scheduled virtually Feb. 9-11. Canceled trade shows cost CEDIA Expo owner Emerald Holding $68 million in Q3, said the company Monday, reporting an 89% revenue drop from the year-ago quarter to $8.5 million. It canceled “substantially all” trade events in the quarter due to COVID-19, it said. It canceled 94 in 2020 and hasn't staged an in-person one since mid-March, said Chief Financial Officer David Doft. The canceled gatherings generated about $236 million of 2019 revenue. Net loss narrowed to $15.3 million vs. $19.7 million. Emerald received an additional $39.8 million of payments in Q3 and $9.5 million so far in Q4 for insurance claims, with an additional $15.8 million recently approved and pending receipt, said Doft.