Mask and temperature checks are among Apple mandates in its gradual reopening for U.S. stores. Nearly 100 Apple stores globally have opened doors to customers, after shutting during different stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, blogged Deirdre O’Brien, senior vice president-retail, outlining the company’s approach Sunday. Stores “will look a little different,” O’Brien said, with “plenty of space” due to occupancy controls and “giving everybody lots of room.” In early May, reports said the company planned to gradually reopen 271 U.S. stores, with the first in Alabama, Alaska, Idaho and South Carolina. A Charleston, South Carolina, store showed daily operating hours Monday of 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Hours at a Fairbanks, Alaska, store are 11 a.m.-6 p.m., noon-6 p.m. on Sunday. The Boise store is open daily 11 a.m.-7 p.m., noon-6 p.m. Sundays, and the Birmingham store is open daily 11 a.m.-6 p.m. A notice for reopened stores on the Apple website says: "For everyone’s safety, we’re following social distancing measures, so you may have to wait in line before entering." The company is reopening some stores this week in Arkansas, California, Colorado, Florida, Hawaii, Oklahoma and Washington. Customers shopping Apple.com can have products shipped, or pick them up at a store. O’Brien also pushed online and phone customer service and support for customer questions. The response to COVID‑19 is ongoing, she noted, and will have “twists and turns.” When looking back on COVID‑19, she said, “We should always remember how so many people around the world put the well‑being of others at the center of their daily lives.” The company didn't respond to questions Monday.

North Carolina state legislators proposed more broadband spending and other connectivity measures, in bills introduced amid COVID-19. The bipartisan HB-1105 would appropriate $30 million for an Information Technology Department special supplementary grant process. Nineteen Democrats and one Republican introduced HB-1122 to allocate $35 million to such a program in FY 2020-21 and $50 million for the two following fiscal years, plus $5 million for a homework gap program. HB-1130 by 18 Democrats would appropriate $5 million for a competitive grant program to provide broadband outside the classroom for public school students. Six Democratic senators introduced a municipal broadband bill (SB-769) in the state that bans muni broadband expansion. Also Thursday in Michigan, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) signed an executive order authorizing and encouraging use of telehealth services during the emergency. Louisiana senators voted 34-0 that day to send to the House the bipartisan SB-406 allowing rural electric cooperatives to provide broadband.

A coming wearable monitors social distancing. It senses when other devices come within 6 feet and alerts wearers with a visual, vibrating or audio alarm, said IK Multimedia Thursday.

Cisco’s Webex videoconferencing platform is operating “at three times the capacity we were running at in February to manage the dramatic increase in usage growth” during the COVID-19 pandemic, said CEO Chuck Robbins on a quarterly call Wednesday. “We had well over 500 million meeting participants, generating 25 billion meeting minutes in April,” he said. Cisco added “many new prospects” through free Webex trials “that we anticipate converting to revenue in the future,” he said. Many enterprise customers already had Webex licenses but “exceeded their usage” and needed to add more users, said Robbins. “We'll work with them to clean that up in the future.” The priority during the crisis was “getting them up and running and just allowing them to be productive,” he said. Cisco spent the past two years “rebuilding and modernizing the Webex architecture,” he said. “We've now gone through two months of building out capacity on a global basis. Webex was the largest platform in the world in February, and now it's three times what it was then.” The stock closed up 4.5% Thursday at $43.85.

Keep providing free internet to low-income families who need it amid COVID-19, said San Jose, Los Angeles, San Francisco and eight other California mayors in a Thursday letter to AT&T, Comcast, T-Mobile, Frontier Communications, Charter Communications and Cox Communications. San Jose's Sam Liccardo (D) and other mayors from both parties urged the companies to extend interim free service at least through July 31. Expand program eligibility including by permitting multiple households with the same address to enroll and qualifying as eligible all families with children at schools with a high percentage of students eligible for the National School Lunch Program, they said. Frontier "shares the concerns of California leaders and is responding to the meet immediate needs during the pandemic through an array of options that provide relief, expand internet access, and promote connectivity to the communities we serve," a spokesperson emailed. Other ISPs didn’t comment.

If COVID-19-induced telework persists after the pandemic, it could speed virtual reality adoption, said eMagin CEO Andrew Sculley on a Thursday investor call. “If I'm sitting at the office and I'm a stock trader or something like that, I may have six screens.” There’s “talk” of replacing them with one VR headset, he said. “If we continue to work at home, that would make it very convenient instead of requiring me to have six screens on my dining room table.” The "consumer world thinks that our technology is the way to go,” the executive said as his company reported Q1 results.

Seven hundred seventy-four broadband and phone providers extended their Keep Americans Connected pledge through June 30, the FCC said Thursday. The agency said Chairman Ajit Pai's requested extension (see 2004300044) resulted in more companies signing up for KAC than declining to extend previous commitments. The extensions "will help ensure that Americans can continue to communicate with loved ones, access education, and get healthcare remotely as they practice social distancing," Pai said. Under KAC, providers agree not to end service due to bill nonpayment caused by the pandemic, waive any pandemic-caused late fees and open their Wi-Fi hot spots to the public. ACA Connects President Matt Polka said its members "have been looking out for their customers and communities long before COVID-19, and all of them will continue to do so long afterward," and the association reaffirmed its endorsement of the pledge through the extension. Bad debt costs associated with KAC are growing, with telecoms setting up reserves of hundreds of millions of dollars in anticipation (see 2005120017).

The Home Entertainment Show 2020 became the latest casualty from the COVID-19 pandemic, saying Wednesday the December expo, tentatively rescheduled from June, was canceled. Organizers emailed exhibitors, showgoers and the media with “what we believe to be a final update.” They were in the final stages of announcing an intention to “simply move the dates” of the event to be at the Hilton Long Beach in southern California from June 12-14 to December but didn't receive “solid answers” from the hotel after asking for clarification on health and safety policies: “We wanted to ensure everyone was going to be safe.” Questions to the hotel were referred to Hilton’s corporate office Thursday. A spokesperson said Hilton was looking into the questions but the Long Beach hotel is independently owned and operated. After hearing Gov. Gavin Newsom (D)’s four-stage Resilience Roadmap for reopening the state, T.H.E. organizers contacted the hotel again, “this time to request information on a full cancellation,” saying the hotel wouldn’t be able to guarantee the event even if it were to be in December.

U.S. District Judge Arthur Schwab in Pittsburgh Thursday ordered consolidated (in Pacer) nearly two dozen complaints from advocates for the blind against Onkyo, Sound United, Vizio and other consumer product companies. The complaints, filed by nine plaintiffs individually or in tandem with others, allege the companies fail to make their e-commerce sites accessible to the visually impaired, in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Their alleged negligence is especially worrisome during the COVID-19 pandemic, say the complaints, because shelter-in-place orders make it more important for the blind to have access to online retailers. Sound United "takes all complaints very seriously," emailed a spokesperson Thursday. "We cannot comment further on pending litigation.” Onkyo and Vizio didn’t respond to queries.

Poor access point placement is the top cause of shoddy Wi-Fi performance, followed by dead zones and neighbor interference, Maravedis reported Wednesday. A third of the world’s population was ordered to “shelter at home” in early April, taxing the internet “as it never has been before,” said the report, sponsored by Ambeent. Telehealth, remote learning, video collaboration, streamed religious services and online concerts are among the high-bandwidth activities households are turning to, but home Wi-Fi networks aren’t keeping up, it said. Legacy 802.11n Wi-Fi products are delivering “a poor experience” under jacked-up demand, especially on the upload end. Since March 1, national upstream peak-hour growth is up 35%, downstream, 19%, NCTA said. A May Sandvine report said video, gaming and social media are generating 80% of internet traffic during the stay-at-home period.