App for absent fans costs Tokyo dear

TOKYO: Japan’s top telecommunications company is getting 7.3 billion yen (about $67 million) in taxpayer money to design mobile tracking software to curb the spread of Covid infections during the Tokyo Olympics. There’s one catch: Few fans from abroad will be around to use it. Olympic organisers and the IOC announced a ban on fans from abroad attending the games. NTT Communications Corp., a group company of Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp. and a domestic sponsor of the Games, heads the consortium developing the app in multiple languages that is set for release in June. Opposition lawmaker Kanako Otsuji has said the app is a waste of money. “When there will likely be no spectators, is this the time to be designing an app for fans? The Japanese govt has failed over and over in digital innovation, but it’s going to have success with this new app?” she said on her YouTube channel last month. Users are to download the app in their cell phones so their whereabouts can be monitored with satellite technology. In theory, it tracks infections. But it all must be done in good faith and is effective only if people use it honestly and diligently to record their health conditions and warn others of outbreaks. The NTT app costs nearly 20 times as much as an earlier glitch-plagued tracking app, called Cocoa, for “COVID-19 Contact Confirming Application,” offered free to the Japanese public last year. NTT Communications declined comment, referring queries to the government.