NARUC will go virtual for its July 20-22 conference rather than meet in Boston, the state utility regulators’ association said Wednesday. NATOA said the same day that its board voted unanimously to virtualize its Aug. 31 to Sept. 3 conference rather than have it in Denver. See our news bulletin: 2005200060. NARUC decided based on surveys earlier this month of industry stakeholders and commission chairs (see 2005050052), said Michelle Malloy, senior director-meetings and member service, in an interview. Respondents raised concerns about safety, budget and travel bans at their organizations with no declared end dates, plus the planned location Boston hasn’t set an end date for its shutdown, she said. NARUC is reviewing bylaws to ensure committee business meetings and resolution votes may be conducted by video or audio and is working with the vendor of its existing meeting app to virtualize the conference, she said. The conference will go 12:30-5 p.m. EDT each day to accommodate West Coasters, she said. Expect a mix of live and prerecorded content, with sessions available for viewing afterward on demand, she said. Meeting virtually is an opportunity to bring in more commission staff, who may not have had budget to travel to physical meetings, she said. COVID-19 will be the big but not only topic, Malloy said. NARUC signed the contract for the Boston location in 2016, but “the venue was very accommodating” to cancellation, she said. “We have opened a dialog about a future meeting there.” The association hasn’t decided the fate of the Nov. 8-11 meeting in Seattle but may continue to incorporate some digital in future meetings, said Malloy. The regional Mid-Atlantic Conference of Regulatory Utilities Commissioners (MACRUC) conference also will be virtual June 22-24. NATOA decided not to meet in person after weighing "the costs to the organization, the well-being of our attendees, the economic hardship of our member communities and our responsibilities as individuals and as an organization to the public health and safety," President Brian Roberts and Executive Director Tonya Rideout emailed members Wednesday. The virtual event won't be "just fancy webinars," they said. "There will be keynotes, panel sessions, roundtables and networking in online lounges and virtual gathering spots."

COVID-19 disruptions in the Chinese supply chain caught some U.S. importers off guard, Microsoft’s top logistics point man told an IHS Markit webinar. The vast majority of them had an “urgent, knee-jerk reaction,” said David Warrick, Microsoft general manager-global supply chain. “Most companies were not actually prepared for the size, scale or longevity” of the pandemic, he said Tuesday. It’s extremely difficult to navigate through the crisis “if you don’t have the visibility in the first instance,” said Warrick. “You have to understand what’s going on to be able to impact it and affect it.” Many companies before the pandemic shied away from building “visibility tools” into their supply chains because they feared “an enterprise-level investment,” said Warrick. “It feels like it’s millions of dollars that has to be done for a multiyear plan to be able to bring this type of technology to the fore.” But, such tracking is available in a “plug-and-play” fashion and can be installed as an “overlay” on existing supply chain “infrastructure,” said Warrick.

Lenovo’s PC manufacturing in China was one of the first in the industry to “resume full production” after the COVID-19 pandemic and achieved “daily, weekly and monthly production records in March,” said CEO Yang Yuanqing on a quarterly call Tuesday. “This helped us meet the strong PC demand, driven by work from home and study at home due to the lockdown.” Lenovo’s PC volume for the year “outgrew the market” by more than 4 percentage points, helped by an 18% sales volume increase in North America, he said. The “clear trend” during global shelter-in-place orders is toward “one PC per person” from one or two per family, said Chief Operating Officer Gianfranco Lanci. “This is going to last,” because people “will continue to work from home even after the crisis,” he said.

Though the tech sector is “not immune to the turbulent operating environment” of COVID-19, technology will be “what modifies the current weakness and drives new demand and business models post-pandemic,” said Analog Devices CEO Vincent Roche on a quarterly call Wednesday. Capacity was reduced at the chipmaker’s “back-end test and assembly sites” in the Philippines, Malaysia and Singapore when shelter-in-place mandates were ordered in mid-March, he said. “Once granted essential status, we acted quickly, yet responsibly, to ensure employee safety and improve our capacity.” The factories are running at “normal capacity levels” again, said Roche. “Post-pandemic supply chains will be reimagined and new ones will be built” that are more “flexible” and automated, he said. The stock closed up 7.8% at $114.57.

Help incarcerated citizens stay connected with 60 days of free calls in facilities under contract to Securus, three former FCC commissioners wrote Tom Gores, founder of Platinum Equity, which controls the inmate calling services provider. "While the phone justice movement has been long advocating for rate reform, the cruel ramifications of COVID-19 are a stark reminder of how onerous the inmate calling system is and why rate relief is needed now," Democrats Mignon Clyburn, Michael Copps and Gloria Tristani wrote. Securus would be “happy to brief” commissioners “on the steps we’ve taken to keep communications tools accessible while still protecting public safety,” a spokesperson emailed us Wednesday. “Since March 13, we have provided incarcerated Americans with more than 10 million free phone calls and millions of free video connections and digital messages. We were also proud to commit to the FCC’s Keep Americans Connected Pledge.” Advocacy groups made similar requests in March (see 2003300022). Congress is considering legislation capping inmate calling service rates (see 2005130059).

Senate Communications Subcommittee Chairman John Thune, R-S.D., and Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., urged the Treasury Department and Small Business Administration to clarify telecom cooperatives classified as IRS 501(c)(12) entities are eligible for Paycheck Protection Program funds. Congress first authorized PPP in March via the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act (see 2003260063). The Health and Economic Recovery Omnibus Emergency Solutions Act (HR-6800), which the House passed Friday (see 2005180056), includes language to make broadcasters and other local outlets eligible for PPP. An interim final rule “clarifies that electric cooperatives” organized as 501(c)(12)s are eligible for funding, but “further clarification” is needed to also include telecom co-ops, Thune and Klobuchar wrote Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and SBA Administrator Jovita Carranza. Treasury and SBA didn’t comment.

Walmart fiscal Q1 U.S. e-commerce sales jumped 74% from the year-ago quarter and remained strong throughout the quarter, said CEO Doug McMillon. Store traffic was “quite variable” due to different stay-in-place orders and social distancing nationally, McMillon said Tuesday. Later last quarter there was a shift to at-home entertainment and education when home categories “took off” in store and online, he said. Q1 ended April 30. Stimulus check spending at the end of the quarter led to sales increases including for videogames. Walmart discontinued the Jet.com service as part of an effort to streamline expenses. The brand name may still be used in the future, but the Walmart brand has higher traction with consumers, said McMillon. The 2016 purchase was critical to building the company’s e-commerce business, he said. Most Jet.com employees were previously assigned to the Walmart brand, he said. The retailer has an “aggressive mindset” for its e-commerce business, said McMillon. The company will use its 2,500 stores for fulfillment, said Mark Lore, CEO of Walmart eCommerce. He founded Jet.com.

Dialog Semiconductor's Wireless Ranging software development kit is designed for companies to ensure safe distances during “controlled reopening” of workplaces as COVID-19 restrictions ease. The Bluetooth low energy SoCs with a 2.4 GHz radio use “radar-like implementation” to improve distance measurement accuracy between BLE connected devices, said Dialog Monday.

IFA 2020 organizers are confident conditions Sept. 3-5 will permit a vastly downsized in-person event at the Messe Berlin fairgrounds, limited to 4,000 people daily, with no consumers and a three-day run instead of the usual six, they said at a virtual news conference Tuesday. The show will have “virtual opportunities” for those who can’t or don’t want to travel to Berlin, and would move to an all-virtual format as a “fallback” if the pandemic worsens, said IFA Berlin Executive Director Jens Heithecker. “We cannot simply shut down the global economy and tell everybody to come back next year,” said Heithecker. “After all the event cancellations the past five months, our industry urgently needs the platform where it can showcase its innovation, so that it can recover and rebound.” Berlin is one of the few capital cities in the world to be “relatively unaffected” by COVID-19, said Heithecker. IFA consulted with local health authorities, and “together we have agreed on a safe and workable solution” for the 2020 show, he said. The gathering and CES often compete for bragging rights about which has more attendees, who in normal years number far above 100,000.

COVID-19 forced cancellation of the Sept. 11-14 IBC2020 in Amsterdam, said event CEO Michael Crimp Monday. “A return to (a new) normal is unlikely to be achieved by September.” The “still many unknowns” make it impossible to “guarantee that we will be able to deliver a safe and valuable event,” he said. “Important aspects of a large-scale event such as IBC will be greatly altered by social distancing, travel restrictions, masks etc. so much so that the spirit of IBC will be compromised.”