There’s little appetite among U.S. marketers to board an airplane for business travel, even if their companies allowed it, and the biggest plurality (12.5%) thinks it will be September before business trips are reinstated, an Association of National Advertisers survey found. ANA canvassed 1,631 marketing professionals Jan. 18-29, finding 76% are barred by company policy from flying for business. When respondents were asked when they most likely would “feel comfortable” returning to in-person events if allowed to go, the largest proportion (31%) responded “sometime in 2022.” On factors that would make them “comfortable enough” to travel again, 75% of respondents said “being personally vaccinated” against COVID-19 would be the turning point, while 70% would be satisfied with “broad distribution” of the vaccine. A distant third comforting factor at 44% was better “understanding specific airline cleaning protocols.”
The FCC is seeking assistance with outreach efforts for the $3.2 billion emergency broadband benefit program, it said Thursday (see 2102090048). Interested individuals and organizations can sign up here. “We all have a part to play in this effort,” said acting Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel in a statement. “I hope every one of you will join us as we seek to raise awareness about this opportunity to get more of us connected.”
FCC Commissioner Geoffrey Starks will host his second roundtable with presidents of historically Black colleges and universities Feb. 18 at 2 p.m. EST to discuss how to get students online during the pandemic, a news release said Thursday. The virtual event will be moderated by Dominique Harrison, director-technology policy at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, with panelists Tony Allen of Delaware State University, Wayne Frederick of Howard University, David Thomas of Morehouse College and Glenda Glover of Tennessee State University.
Cisco's “premise” is that enterprise customers will begin returning to physical offices in mid- to late summer, said CEO Chuck Robbins on a fiscal Q2 call Tuesday. As companies look to prepare, “we’ve seen significant uptake in Wi-Fi 6,” he said. “That will require switching infrastructure as people come back to the office and begin to put load on those wireless networks.” Cisco assumes every meeting in the future will be “hybrid,” even after people return to physical workspaces, he said. “You’ll have people in the office, and you’ll have people remote. In order to accommodate that, we suspect most of our customers will be putting video units in every conference room.” Cisco’s “strong momentum” with Webex continued in the quarter ended Jan. 23, said Robbins. The platform served nearly 600 million users, and “we are connecting over 6 billion calls every month,” he said. “Our goal is to deliver a 10X better experience than just in-person interactions.”
Movie theater industry health “remains very much in question due to COVID-19,” Cowen wrote investors, saying the negative impact will be spread over several years. Digital consumption, meanwhile, will maintain, “if not enhance,” the value of large film libraries, the analyst firm said. The near-term impact of COVID-19 will be “far more modest than that suggested by the total shutdown of the theatrical release window” (see 2102030032), Cowen said. A larger concern is “the health of movie theaters,” which aren’t positioned to survive an extended shutdown, said Monday's report. Even before COVID-19, Cowen forecast 2020 U.S. box office would fall short of $10 billion, the worst year “since at least 2008.” It now expects theaters to be largely closed until midyear. The National Association of Theatre Owners didn't comment Tuesday.
Refrain from acting to curb 6 GHz unlicensed use, the Wi-Fi Alliance urged the FCC in a filing posted Monday in docket 18-295: The need “was significant pre-pandemic and has only increased with hundreds of millions of Americans relying on Wi-Fi."
Energizer customers are buying batteries en masse “for immediate use,” said CEO Mark LaVigne on a fiscal Q1 call Monday. “Consumers have increased the number of devices they own, as well as their usage of those devices.” Pandemic-driven demand “for the foreseeable future will continue to be the main story,” he said.
COVID-19 was a “critical catalyst” and a “massive accelerant” to the digital transformation that was “already reshaping the working world” before the pandemic, said Poly CEO Dave Shull on a fiscal Q3 investor call Thursday. “Zoom, Teams and Slack were not invented in response to the coronavirus,” he said. “They were already there.” Remote work “and the infrastructure necessary to support it were already spreading throughout the working world,” he said. “The pandemic has just exponentially accelerated adoption and usage of these types of platforms.” Shull is a “remote video convert,” he said. “I've gone from abhorring remote working to fully embracing the work revolution. Videoconferencing has become a way of life. Embracing video and the cloud transition will define the post-COVID return to the office.” Analysts estimate fewer than 10% of the roughly 50 million conference rooms in the world are “video-enabled,” he said. “They also estimate there are more than 400 million legacy phones in offices around the world that will be replaced with cloud-based audio devices and collaboration tools.” The stock closed 19.4% higher Friday at $41.85.
When the pandemic began, “consumers in lockdown had no choice but to do all of their shopping online,” said PayPal CEO Dan Schulman on a quarterly call Wednesday. The vast majority of consumers now say that post-COVID-19 crisis, “they will continue to shop online at their current elevated levels because it is more convenient,” he said. “Retailers are rapidly adapting to a new landscape.” PayPal estimates the pandemic “accelerated a digital wave of change across almost every industry by three to five years, unleashing a profound and permanent structural transformation,” he said. The service added 16 million net new active customers in the quarter, he said. The stock closed Thursday up 7.4% at $270.43. See Q4 materials here.
The FCC directed the Universal Service Administrative Co. to administer the remainder of round 1 and all of round 2 of the COVID-19 telehealth program, a report and order said Tuesday in docket 20-89. Congress appropriated $249.95 million for the second round in December. USAC's role will be limited to program administration only; it can't make policy decisions. The commission will hear from staff about additional steps being taken on the program during its Feb. 17 meeting (see 2101270060).