Arkansas Commissioner Kimberly O’Guinn will chair a new NARUC task force on emergency preparedness, recovery and resiliency, the association said Thursday. Washington state Commissioner Ann Rendahl will chair a COVID-19 subcommittee, it said. The group will first meet at NARUC’s virtual conference July 20-22.

State broadband offices are eyeing COVID-19 relief funding, Colorado and Tennessee officials said Wednesday on a Fiber Broadband Association webinar. Money could come from Tennessee’s Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (Cares) Act allocation, and Gov. Bill Lee (R) is evaluating state needs, said Department of Economic and Community Development Broadband Director Crystal Ivey. Tennessee may use for broadband part of its allocation of funding that U.S. Housing and Urban Development received from the act, she said. The Institute of Museum and Library Services also received money and is distributing it among states, with Tennessee libraries applying for grants to pay for hot spots and videoconferencing equipment, Ivey said. Colorado is evaluating using funding from the Cares Act’s Educational Stabilization Fund, said Colorado Broadband Office Director-Federal Broadband Engagement Teresa Ferguson. Colorado may apply for some of the $1.5 billion received by the Economic Development Administration that may be used for broadband deployment, she added. The broadband office is “looking at outreach, public engagement and data collection platforms” to reassess how best to spend resources, Ferguson said. It needs more federal funding and better maps, she said. “The states can't print money. The feds can.”

Senate Health Committee Chairman Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., said during a Wednesday hearing he wants Congress to make permanent two recent temporary rollbacks of telehealth restrictions. The Coronavirus Aid Relief and Economic Security Act Congress passed in March included language from the Creating Opportunities Now for Necessary and Effective Care Technologies for Health Act (HR-4982/S-2741) to expand telehealth services through Medicare. The Cares Act allowed the rules changes to remain in effect only during the COVID-19 pandemic (see 2003250046). “We ought to stop and think for a moment about how significant a change this is and whether it would have even possibly happened without” the crisis, Alexander said during the Senate Health hearing. Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Roger Wicker, R-Miss., and Communications Subcommittee ranking member Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, are among lawmakers pushing to make the rules changes permanent (see 2006150032). Alexander also noted the temporary lift of Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act security rules that allow patients to use FaceTime and other platforms to communicate with doctors. “The question of whether to extend the HIPAA privacy waivers should be considered carefully,” he said. “There are privacy and security concerns about the use of personal medical information by technology platform companies, as well as concerns about criminals hacking into these platforms.” American Telemedicine Association President Joseph Kvedar told Senate Health “we must make sure that essential telehealth services do not abruptly end with the public health emergency, especially as we look to reorient our healthcare system to deliver 21st century care.” University of Virginia Center for Telehealth Director Karen Rheuban also backed Alexander’s call for permanent rules changes, saying UVA “saw a greater than 9,000% increase in the use of telehealth” during the epidemic. Blue Cross Blue Shield of Tennessee Chief Medical Officer Andrea Willis told the committee it’s unclear whether increased telehealth use is going to result in higher premiums.

Mastercard began tokens for transactions in 12 countries including the U.S., working with companies including Amazon. This replaces a physical credit card number and payment information is unique to each transaction and can be used only by the merchant that requested it, the card issuer said Wednesday. More consumers are saving and managing payment card details across websites, it said: Merchants worldwide use its tokenization technology. A May Mastercard report said more than $53 billion in incremental spending occurred on e-commerce in the U.S. vs. what's typical, due to the pandemic. Consumers “adapted to a new reality,” moving to the internet to acquire goods and services, said the report. The company didn't respond to questions on the token rollout.

Notebook PC displays are seen increasing 9% year on year in Q2, as lockdown conditions spurred demand for small-screen productivity devices, reported Omdia Tuesday. Consumers “increasingly need to buy computers, tablets and monitors so they can work from home or attend online school,” said analyst Peter Su. But buying a TV “is not a priority for most people” during the pandemic, he noted: TV display unit shipments are expected to fall 13% in Q2.

The Media Institute scheduled a “virtual luncheon” June 30, with Wells Fargo media analyst Davis Hebert. The event is a stand-in for the institute’s series of Communications Forum luncheons. A scheduled June 25 event with Commissioner Mike O’Rielly has been moved to July 29, the Media Institute said.

Augmented- and virtual-reality collaboration tools, known collectively as extended reality (XR), will exceed $400 million by 2025, up from less than $12 million last year, said ABI Research Wednesday. Heightened demand during COVID-19 is expected to accelerate adoption of XR and increase growth of established markets such as videoconferencing hardware, seen approaching $4 billion by 2025, up from $2.4 billion in 2019. The communications market “was already shifting to support a wider breadth of devices, services, and environments and the pandemic has accelerated these trends,” said analyst Michael Inouye.

U.S. importers sourced 11.93 million smartphones in April, shows Census Bureau data we accessed Wednesday through the International Trade Commission, a 4.9% sequential increase and 21% decline from April 2019. Shipments from China were 9.06 million handsets in April, up 27% from March, down 21% from 2019. Two months earlier, COVID-19 factory shutdowns sent February Chinese smartphone imports tumbling (see 2005060066).

Online and other non-store sales last month rose 9% sequentially and 25.3% from May 2019, reported the National Retail Federation Tuesday. It said "businesses closed by the coronavirus pandemic began to reopen."

AT&T is still working through what the COVID-19 pandemic will mean for its business and network, Jeff McElfresh, CEO of AT&T Communications, said at a Bank of America virtual conference Tuesday. Questions remain whether an iconic phone will emerge this year “that brings with it the true 5G new radio capabilities” and how much consumers will be willing to pay, he said. “It’s to be seen … but we’re planning for it and we will be there to compete,” McElfresh said. AT&T is unlikely to reopen all of its company stores closed as a result of the virus, he said. “At a high level, it’s too early for anybody to predict what the recovery is going to look like,” he said: “Our network performed incredibly well. The demand for products and services, such as broadband connectivity and wireless, really flourished.” What’s happening varies across the U.S., he said. “We’ve got different gradations of recoveries or shelter-in-place rules and regulations.” AT&T is having more business traffic in areas that reopened than in those that remain closed, which is “common sense,” McElfresh said. Companies learned a lot about how employees can work from home and stay productive, he noted. AT&T is evaluating “all options that might be available” to get more mid-band spectrum, especially the C band, he said, “There’s no other spectrum that’s available with that kind of bandwidth,” he said of the C band. “The big question is will it be unencumbered and can it be put to use in an orderly fashion” and on an acceptable timeline, he said.