DOJ and the FTC will provide expedited antitrust review and guidance for COVID-19 public health ventures, the agencies announced Tuesday. Businesses may need to combine production to provide resources in the pandemic, the agencies said. Expedited procedures will allow the agencies to respond within seven days to all COVID-19-related requests addressing public health and safety, the agencies said. This quicker turnaround is “designed to provide guidance to businesses concerned about the legality of proposed conduct under the antitrust laws,” the agencies said. The FTC is committed to “doing everything we can to help with these efforts, while continuing to aggressively enforce the antitrust laws,” Chairman Joe Simons said. DOJ said the agencies will hold accountable any entities using the pandemic to engage in antitrust violations, citing price-fixing, bid-rigging and market allocation. The FTC and DOJ also committed to expedite National Cooperative Research and Production Act requests for “flexible treatment of certain standard development organizations and joint ventures.”

The COVID-19 pandemic shows the critical need for internet access, said state broadband officials on a Schools, Health and Libraries Broadband Coalition webinar Tuesday. “When we get through this, the silver lining for me will be if we’ve identified where we need broadband, how we’re going to fund that broadband and set a national and state strategic plan to getting there,” said Colorado Broadband Office Director-Federal Broadband Engagement Teresa Ferguson. The coronavirus “has brought home the point many of us have been trying to make for years” that broadband must be a priority, she said: “It is not enough just to fund to the anchor institutions,” but to go “through to the home.” Tennessee “will continue to focus on funding the deployment of infrastructure as well as digital literacy and adoption,” said Department of Economic and Community Development Broadband Director Crystal Ivey. Many states with broadband funding lack dedicated digital literacy support, so Ivey will watch whether the pandemic affects the amount of funding dedicated to increasing adoption, she said. “We’ve known the importance of connectivity for our communities, but as more of us are being asked to stay home from work and school, the issue is being elevated even further.” With so many working at home, broadband’s importance is “really becoming increasingly evident” (see 2002270006), said Pew Broadband Research Initiative Officer Anna Read.

Anecdotal evidence suggests people are heeding government guidance and staying home, T-Mobile Chief Technology Officer Neville Ray blogged Tuesday. In New York City, the carrier is seeing an 86% increase in subscribers connecting to cellsites only in their primary location. The San Francisco Bay Area has a 77% increase “and we’re seeing similar patterns across the country,” Ray said. People are texting more and playing videogames, he said: Videogame traffic is up 45%. “While overall data traffic is higher, the overall contribution to total network loading has been relatively minor," the CTO wrote. That mobile data and Wi-Fi traffic are soaring during the pandemic shows why AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile were “keen to borrow fallow spectrum” from Dish Network, New Street’s Jonathan Chaplin wrote investors. “AT&T is in the process of increasing its capacity by 60% with its own new spectrum; if Verizon and T-Mobile are seeing a 40% increase in mobile traffic, with no new spectrum of their own to bring to bear, we would assume their networks would be showing strain,” the analyst said: Dish’s spectrum may prove important “beyond the next 60 days” and loans may be converted to leases. In-home data usage this month through March 17 was up 18% from the same period a year earlier, said Comscore Tuesday. Mobile phones, smart speakers, connected TVs and streaming boxes had the biggest increases, it said: "If the current quarantines continue across the country, we expect this upward data usage trend to continue.” The deployment of borrowed spectrum is having a noticeable effect, based on new data from Opensignal, Lightshed’s Walter Piecyk told investors. T-Mobile “doubled the amount of 600 MHz spectrum deployed for LTE in the top 100 markets, on average to 20 MHz from 10 MHz” and “quadrupled deployments to 40 MHz," the analyst wrote, "in markets like New York, Boston, and Salt Lake City.”