News > Japan spends billions on technology for absent Olympic fans

Japan spends billions on technology for absent Olympic fans

Japan’s top telecommunications company is getting JPY 7.3 billion — about USD 67 million — in taxpayer money to design mobile tracking software to curb the spread of coronavirus infections during the Tokyo Olympics. There's one catch: Few Olympic fans from abroad will be around to use it.

Users are to download the app on their cell phones and In theory, it tracks infections. The NTT app costs nearly 20 times as much as an earlier glitch-plagued tracking app, called Cocoa.