Cellular companies such as Verizon are looking to challenge traditional cable companies with residential internet service that promises to be ultra-fast, affordable and wireless.

Using an emerging wireless technology known as 5G, Verizon’s 5G Home service provides an alternative to cable for connecting laptops, phones, TVs and other devices over Wi-Fi. It launches in four U.S. cities on Monday.

Verizon won’t be matching cable companies on packages that also come with TV channels and home phone service. But fewer people have been subscribing to such bundles anyway, as they embrace streaming services such as Netflix for video and cellphone services instead of landline.

“That’s the trend that cable has been having problems with for several years, and a trend that phone companies can take advantage of,” Gartner analyst Bill Menzes said.

That’s if the wireless companies can offer a service that proves affordable and effective.

T-Mobile and Sprint are also planning a residential 5G service as part of their merger proposal, though few details are known.

Verizon’s broadband-only service will cost $70 a month, with a $20 discount for Verizon cellular customers. According to Leichtman Research Group, the average price for broadband internet is about $60, meaning only some customers will be saving money.

Even so, Verizon can try to win over some customers with promises of reliability.

Verizon says its service will be much faster than cable. That means downloading a two-hour movie in high definition in two minutes rather than 21. The service promises to let families play data-intensive games and watch video on multiple devices at once, with little or no lag.

“The things that really matter to a customer are how fast it is and how reliable it is,” longtime telecom analyst Dave Burstein said. In tests of Verizon’s 5G so far, he said, “reliability is proving out quite nicely.”

Verizon could also capitalize on many people’s frustration with their cable companies. Consumer Reports magazine says customers have long been unhappy with perceived weak customer service, high prices and hidden fees.

The residential 5G service is part of a broader upgrade in wireless technology.

Verizon has spent billions of dollars for rights to previously unused radio waves at the high end of the frequency spectrum. It’s a short-range signal, ideal for city blocks and apartment buildings, but less so for sprawling suburbs or rural communities. That’s why Verizon is pushing residential service first, while AT&T is building a more traditional cellular network for people on the go, using radio waves at the lower end.

AT&T is aiming to launch its 5G mobile network this year in 12 cities, including Atlanta and Charlotte, North Carolina. Dish also has plans for a 5G network, but it’s focused on connecting the so-called “Internet of Things,” everything from laundry machines to parking meters, rather than cellphones or residential broadband.

Sprint tried to introduce residential wireless service before, using a technology called WiMax, but it failed to gain many subscribers as LTE trumped WiMax as the dominant cellular technology. This time, Verizon is using the same 5G technology that will eventually make its way into 5G cellular networks.

The Verizon service will start in parts of Houston, Indianapolis, Los Angeles, and Sacramento, California.

“These are small areas but significant,” said Ronan Dunne, president of Verizon Wireless. “Tens of thousands of homes, not hundreds of thousands of homes.” Eventually, Verizon projects 30 million homes in the U.S. will be eligible, though there’s no timeline.

For now, Verizon isn’t planning to hit markets where it already has its cable-like Fios service. Verizon stopped expanding Fios around 2010, in part because it was expensive to dig up streets and lay fiber-optic lines. Verizon can build 5G more cheaply because it can use the same towers available for cellular service.

That said, Verizon might not recoup its costs if it ends up drawing only customers who stand to save money over cable, said John Horrigan, a broadband expert at the Technology Policy Institute.

And while Verizon says the new network will be able to handle lots of devices at once, anyone who’s tried to use a phone during concerts and conferences will know that the airwaves can get congested quickly.

What Verizon’s service won’t do is extend high-speed internet access to rural America, where many households can’t get broadband at all, let alone competition. Cable and other companies haven’t found it profitable to extend wires to remote parts of the country. But Verizon will face the same problem, given that its short-range signal will require several wireless towers closer together. That’s feasible only in densely populated areas.

That’s not good enough, said Harold Feld, senior vice president of the advocacy group Public Knowledge. He said internet service at reasonable prices is “fundamental” for all Americans — not just those who live in populated areas.

T-Mobile and Sprint want to jointly create a 5G network that would also offer residential wireless broadband, but not for a few years. In seeking regulatory approval, the companies say 20 percent to 25 percent of subscribers will be in rural areas that have limited access to broadband. But the companies offered no details on how they would do so. T-Mobile and Sprint declined to comment.

 
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California Gov. Jerry Brown has approved the nation’s strongest net neutrality law, prompting an immediate lawsuit by the Trump administration and opening the next phase in the battle over regulating the internet.

Advocates of net neutrality hope California’s law, which Brown signed Sunday to stop internet providers from favoring certain content or websites, will push Congress to enact national rules or encourage other states to create their own.

However, the U.S. Department of Justice quickly moved to halt the law from taking effect, arguing that it creates burdensome, anti-consumer requirements that go against the federal government’s approach to deregulating the internet.

“Once again the California Legislature has enacted an extreme and illegal state law attempting to frustrate federal policy,” U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in a statement.

The Federal Communications Commission repealed Obama-era rules last year that prevented internet companies from exercising more control over what people watch and see on the internet.

The neutrality law is the latest example of California, ground zero of the global technology industry, attempting to drive public policy outside its borders and rebuff President Donald Trump’s agenda.

Brown did not explain his reasons for signing the bill or comment on the federal lawsuit Sunday night.

Supporters of the new law cheered it as a win for internet freedom. It is set to take effect January 1.

“This is a historic day for California. A free and open internet is a cornerstone of 21st century life: our democracy, our economy, our health care and public safety systems, and day-to-day activities,” said Democratic Sen. Scott Wiener, the law’s author.

It prohibits internet providers from blocking or slowing data based on content or from favoring websites or video streams from companies that pay extra.

Telecommunications companies lobbied hard to kill it or water it down, saying it would lead to higher internet and cellphone bills and discourage investments in faster internet. They say it’s unrealistic to expect them to comply with internet regulations that differ from state to state.

USTelecom, a telecommunications trade group, said California writing its own rules will create problems.

“Rather than 50 states stepping in with their own conflicting open internet solutions, we need Congress to step up with a national framework for the whole internet ecosystem and resolve this issue once and for all,” the group said in a Sunday statement.

Net neutrality advocates worry that without rules, internet providers could create fast lanes and slow lanes that favor their own sites and apps or make it harder for consumers to see content from competitors.

That could limit consumer choice or shut out upstart companies that can’t afford to buy access to the fast lane, critics say.

The new law also bans “zero rating,” in which internet providers don’t count certain content against a monthly data cap — generally video streams produced by the company’s own subsidiaries and partners.

Oregon, Washington and Vermont have approved legislation related to net neutrality, but California’s measure is seen as the most comprehensive attempt to codify the principle in a way that might survive a likely court challenge. An identical bill was introduced in New York.
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The security breach Facebook announced Friday that affected 50 million users was a setback for the social media giant, which has been working for months to regain customers’ trust over how it handles their data.

In addition to the 50 million users whose log-on information could have been accessed by hackers, the company required as a precaution another 40 million to log on to be able to get on their accounts. Facebook said it reported the breach of the company’s code, which the firm said it fixed, to law enforcement.

The social media company was not sure Friday whether any personal information had been gathered or misused, but it scrambled to address the issue, which was discovered earlier in the week. Facebook users may find they have to relink their Facebook accounts to their Instagram accounts, and possibly to third-party apps, which users often log on to with their Facebook accounts.

In a call Friday with reporters, Guy Rosen, Facebook vice president of product management, said that the breach appeared to be very broad with no specific country targeted. “We’ll update with what we learn,” he said. 

Focus on elections

The breach came just weeks before the U.S. midterm elections, something the company has been keenly focused on.

More than 300 Facebook workers are scouring the platform, looking for false news, fake accounts and disinformation campaigns by foreign state-sponsored operatives that may be trying to sway voters. Facebook executives have said that they did not do enough to address these issues in the run-up to other elections such as the 2016 U.S. presidential race and that they are working to fix them.

In addition, Facebook’s relationship with its 2 billion users took a hit last spring when it was disclosed that an outside researcher who was given access to Facebook data used the information for political campaigns. As a result, the company contacted users whose information might have been seen or used by the outside firm Cambridge Analytica.

“We have a responsibility to protect your data, and if we can’t, then we don’t deserve to serve you,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a statement posted to his Facebook page in March.

‘View As’ tool

The company said hackers exploited the privacy feature known as “View As,” which lets users see how their own profiles would look to other people. Facebook said hackers were then able to use the security flaw to steal log-in keys, called access tokens, that could allow them to access people’s accounts.

“We’re a big fan of ‘View As’ here at EFF,” said Gennie Gebhart, associate director of research at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the digital civil liberties group. “It’s one good way to make sure that your privacy settings are the way you want them to be. I can see what my friends see or friends of friends see.”

But by checking what a friend can see, the “View As” tool actually made one’s friend vulnerable to this hack.

A relatively new feature that allowed users to upload “Happy Birthday” videos was part of a combination of three bugs that contributed to the vulnerability, the social media firm said.

“It’s one of those weird things that daisy-chained together,” Gebhart added.

Facebook said it was shutting down “View As” until further notice.

The hackers “used the access tokens to query data, but there are no public reports of abusing the access to post updates to timelines or spread disinformation,” said Travis Smith, principal security researcher at Tripwire, a security firm. “This could be because they were only after data or it could be that their attack was cut off midstream by Facebook before they could reach their ultimate goal.”

Security advice

Affected Facebook users should take some additional steps, said Gary Davis, the chief consumer security evangelist at security firm McAfee, who wrote about the Facebook hack in a blog post.

Among them, users should change their log-in information. “Since this flaw logged users out, it’s vital you change up your log-in information,” he wrote. 

He also stressed users should update their Facebook apps as soon as possible.

“Facebook has already issued a fix to this vulnerability, so make sure you update immediately,” he wrote.
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VOA contributor Greta Van Susteren talks with Brad Smith, Microsoft’s President and Chief Legal Officer about the tech giant’s new Artificial Intelligence program.
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The ride-hailing service Uber has agreed to pay $148 million to settle claims that it concealed a massive data breach that exposed personal information of drivers and customers. 

In November 2016, Uber learned that hackers had accessed personal data of about 600,000 Uber drivers, including their driver’s license numbers. Hackers also had stolen email addresses and cellphone numbers of 57 million riders worldwide. 

The claims, filed in every U.S. state and the District of Columbia, said rather than inform the drivers involved, Uber hid the breach for more than a year and paid ransom to ensure the data wouldn’t be misused.

“This is one of the most egregious cases we’ve ever seen in terms of notification; a yearlong delay is just inexcusable,” Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan told The Associated Press. 

Uber’s chief legal officer, Tony West, said the decision to come clean about the hack was made after major management changes at the company. 

“It embodies the principles by which we are running our business today: transparency, integrity and accountability,” West said. 

Each state will receive a part of the settlement based on how many drivers they have. Most states estimate each affected Uber driver will receive about $100. 
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U.S. communications and social media titans are urging lawmakers to craft strong, uniform protections for Americans’ personal data without squashing innovation.

The Senate Commerce Committee heard testimony Wednesday from Apple, Amazon.com, Google, Twitter, and AT&T executives at a time when data breaches are commonplace, many Americans are mystified or unaware of how their personal data may be used or shared, and jurisdictions from the European Union to the state of California have taken action to safeguard consumers.

“Privacy means much more than having the right to not share your personal information. Privacy is about putting the user in control when it comes to that information. We believe that privacy is a fundamental human right, which should be supported by both social norms and the law,” said Apple’s vice president for software technology, Bud Tribble.

“In today’s data-driven world, it is more important than ever to maintain consumers’ trust and give them control over their personal information,” said AT&T’s senior vice president for global public policy, Leonard Cali.

The executives urged lawmakers to implement national standards that would preempt individual states from taking action on their own, as California has done.

“California is a single state, and if other states follow suit, we’ll be facing a patchwork of rules and fragmentation that will be just unworkable for consumers, as well as mobile companies and internet companies,” Cali said.

At the same time, senators were urged to craft legislation with care. Several witnesses described the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation, implemented earlier this year, as overly burdensome.

“Meeting its [the GDPR’s] specific requirements for the handling, retention, and deletion of personal data required us to divert significant resources to administrative tasks and away from invention on behalf of customers,” Amazon.com Vice President Andrew DeVore said.

DeVore added, “We encourage Congress to ensure that additional overhead and administrative demands any legislation might require, actually produce commensurate consumer privacy benefits.”

Current proposal

Congress already has legislation to consider. Earlier this year, Minnesota Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar and Louisiana Republican John Kennedy introduced a bill that would require companies to write terms of service agreements in plain language and allow consumers to review data collected about them and find out if and how it has been shared. Other proposals are likely to be forthcoming.

“The question is no longer whether we need a federal law to protect consumers’ privacy,” said the committee’s chairman, Republican Senator John Thune of South Dakota. “The question is what shape that law should take.”

Privacy questions

Several senators readily acknowledged that they did not grow up in the digital age.

“This thing sometimes mystifies me,” Montana Democrat Jon Tester said, holding up his smartphone.  Tester added that he was perplexed to see that, after searching for new tires for his truck, online advertisements for tires appeared on Web pages he subsequently visited.

“How the hell did they get that information?” he asked.

Google Chief Privacy Officer Keith Enright responded the search engine allows Web pages to earn revenue “by placing advertisements that may be targeted to a user’s interests.” But, he stressed, “No personal information is passing from Google to that third party — we neither sell it nor share it.”
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The Trump administration is hoping Congress can come up with a new set of national rules governing how companies can use consumers’ data that finds a balance between “privacy and prosperity.”

But it will be tricky to reconcile the concerns of privacy advocates who want people to have more control over the usage of their personal data — where they’ve been, what they view, who their friends are —and the powerful companies that mine it for profit.

Senior executives from AT&T, Amazon, Apple, Google, Twitter and Charter Communications are scheduled to testify at the hearing, amid increasing anxiety over safeguarding consumers’ data online and recent scandals that have stoked outrage among users and politicians.

Sen. John Thune, a South Dakota Republican who heads the Senate Commerce Committee, opened Wednesday’s hearing by saying there’s a strong desire by both Republicans and Democrats for a new data privacy law.

But the approach being pondered by policymakers and pushed by the internet industry leans toward a relatively light government touch. That’s in contrast to stricter EU rules that took effect in May.

An early move in President Donald Trump’s tenure set the tone on data privacy. He signed a bill into law in April 2017 that allows internet providers to sell information about their customers’ browsing habits. The legislation scrapped Obama-era online privacy rules aimed at giving consumers more control over how broadband companies like AT&T, Comcast and Verizon share that information.

Allie Bohm, policy counsel at the consumer group Public Knowledge, says examples abound of companies not only using the data to market products but also to profile consumers and restrict who sees their offerings: African Americans not getting access to ads for housing, minorities and older people excluded from seeing job postings.

The companies “aren’t going to tell that story” to the Senate panel, she said. “These companies make their money off consumer data.”

What is needed, privacy advocates maintain, is legislation to govern the entire “life cycle” of consumers’ data: how it’s collected, used, kept, shared and sold.

Meanwhile, regulators elsewhere have started to act.

The 28-nation European Union put in strict new rules this spring that require companies to justify why they’re collecting and using personal data gleaned from phones, apps and visited websites. Companies also must give EU users the ability to access and delete data, and to object to data use under one of the claimed reasons.

A similar law in California will compel companies to tell customers upon request what personal data they’ve collected, why it was collected and what types of third parties have received it. Companies will be able to offer discounts to customers who allow their data to be sold and to charge those who opt out a reasonable amount, based on how much the company makes selling the information.

Andrew DeVore, Amazon’s vice president and associate general counsel, told the Senate panel Wednesday that it should consider the “possible unintended consequences” of California’s approach. For instance, he says the state law defines personal information too broadly such that it could include all data.

The California law doesn’t take effect until 2020 and applies only to California consumers, but it could have fallout effects on other states. And it’s strong enough to have rattled Big Tech, which is seeking a federal data-privacy law that would be more lenient toward the industry.

“A national privacy framework should be consistent throughout all states, pre-empting state consumer-privacy and data security laws,” the Internet Association said in a recent statement . The group represents about 40 big internet and tech companies, spanning Airbnb and Amazon to Zillow. “A strong national baseline creates clear rules for companies.”

The Trump White House said this summer that the administration is working on it, meeting with companies and other interested parties. Thune’s pronouncement and one from a White House official stress that a balance should be struck in any new legislation — between government supervision and technological advancement.

The goal is a policy “that is the appropriate balance between privacy and prosperity,” White House spokeswoman Lindsay Walters said. “We look forward to working with Congress on a legislative solution.”

 
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Many materials change shape when exposed to heat, electricity or some other kind of energy. That change is usually random, but scientists are now learning how to direct that energy to turn the material into a predetermined shape. VOA’s George Putic visited a lab at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh that experiments with morphing materials.
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When Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger sold Instagram to Facebook in 2012, the photo-sharing startup’s fiercely loyal fans worried about what would happen to their beloved app under the social media giant’s wings. 

None of their worst fears materialized. But now that its founders have announced they are leaving in a swirl of well wishes and vague explanations, some of the same worries are bubbling up again — and then some. Will Instagram disappear? Get cluttered with ads and status updates? Suck up personal data for advertising the way its parent does? Lose its cool? 

Worst of all: Will it just become another Facebook?

“It”s probably a bigger challenge (for Facebook) than most people realize,” said Omar Akhtar, an analyst at the technology research firm Altimeter. “Instagram is the only platform that is growing. And a lot of people didn’t necessarily make the connection between Instagram and Facebook.”

Instagram had just 31 million users when Facebook snapped it up for $1 billion; now it has a billion. It had no ads back then; it now features both display and video ads, although they’re still restrained compared to Facebook. But that could quickly change. Facebook’s growth has started to slow, and Wall Street has been pushing the company to find new ways to increase revenue.

Instagram has been a primary focus of those efforts.

Facebook has been elevating Instagram’s profile in its financial discussions. In July, it unveiled a new metric for analysts, touting that 2.5 billion people use at least one of its apps — Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp or Messenger — each month. While not particularly revealing, the measurement underscores the growing importance Facebook places on those secondary apps. 

Facebook doesn’t disclose how much money Instagram pulls in, though Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter estimates it’ll be around $6 billion this year, or just over 10 percent of Facebook’s expected overall revenue of about $55.7 billion. 

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has long seen Instagram’s promise. At the time, it was by far Facebook’s largest acquisition (although it was dwarfed by the $19 billion Zuckerberg paid for WhatsApp two years later). And it was the first startup allowed to operate mostly independently. 

That has paid off big time. Not only did Instagram reach 1 billion users faster than its parent company, it also succeeded in cloning a popular Snapchat feature, dealing a serious blow to that social network upstart and succeeding where Facebook’s own attempts had repeatedly failed. Instagram also pioneered a long-form video feature to challenge YouTube, another big Facebook rival.

Recently, Instagram has been on a roll. In June, Systrom traveled to New York to mark the opening of its new office there, complete with a gelato bar and plans to hire hundreds of engineers. Only a month earlier, Instagram had moved into sparkly new offices in San Francisco. In a July earnings call, Zuckerberg touted Instagram’s success as a function of its integration with Facebook, claiming that it used parent-company infrastructure to grow “more than twice as quickly as it would have on its own.”

But Instagram has also been a case study in how to run a subsidiary independently — especially when its parent is mired in user-privacy problems and concerns about election interference, fake news and misinformation. And especially when its parent has long stopped being cool, what with everyone and their grandma now on it.

Instagram’s simple design — just a collection of photos and videos of sunsets, faraway vacations, intimate breakfasts and baby close-ups — has allowed it to remain a favorite long after it became part of Facebook. If people go to Twitter to bicker over current events and to Facebook to see what old classmates are up to, Instagram is where they go to relax, scroll and feast their eyes.

So, will that change?

“I don’t think Zuckerberg is dumb,” Akhtar said. “He knows that a large part of Instagram’s popularity is that it’s separate from Facebook.”

As such, he thinks Facebook would be wise to reassure users that what they love about Instagram isn’t going to change — that they are not going to be forced to integrate with Facebook. “That’ll go a long way,” he said. 

Internally, the challenge is a bit more complicated. While Systrom and Krieger didn’t say why they’re leaving, their decision echoes the recent departure of WhatsApp’s co-founder and CEO Jan Koum, who resigned in April. Koum had signaled years earlier that he would take a stand if Facebook’s push to increase profits risked compromising core elements of the WhatsApp messaging service, such as its dedication to user privacy. When Facebook started pushing harder for more revenue and more integration with WhatsApp, Koum pulled the ripcord.

One sign that additional integration may be in Instagram’s future: Zuckerberg in May sent longtime Facebook executive Adam Mosseri to run Instagram’s product operation. Mosseri replaced longtime Instagrammer Kevin Weil, who was shuffled back to the Facebook mothership. 

That likely didn’t sit well with Instagram’s founders, Akhtar and other analysts said. Now that they’re gone as well, Mosseri is the most obvious candidate to head Instagram. 

“Kevin Systrom loyalists are probably going to leave,” Akhtar said. 

Which means Facebook may soon have a new challenge on its hands: Figuring out how to keep Instagram growing if it loses the coolness factor that has bolstered it for so long.
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The Indian edition of dating app Tinder is testing a new feature which gives women an additional level of scrutiny before they allow men to start messaging conversations, with a view to rolling the function out globally.

The “My Move” feature allows women to choose in their settings that only they can start a conversation with a male match after both have approved each other with Tinder’s swiping function.

Normally, the app gives both parties to a successful match – where both have swiped yes on the other’s photograph – the right to text each other immediately.

Tinder has been testing the function for several months and plans to spread it worldwide if the Indian rollout proves successful. Rival dating-app Bumble already only allows the female party to a heterosexual match to start conversations.

Dating is still frowned upon in many circles in India’s religiously- and ethnically-divided society, where arranged marriages are still the norm.

Taru Kapoor, general manager for Tinder owner Match Group in India, told Reuters the function had been pioneered in India because of Tinder’s need to attract more women to the app by making them feel more comfortable and secure.

“We’re a platform based on mutual respect, consent, and choice,” she said. “We are focused on making the experience of women safer.”

Thousands of reports of sexual violence and rape in India each year have raised concerns around the safety of women in many parts of the country.

Yet an emerging class of young, well-to-do Indians in cosmopolitan cities like Bengaluru and Mumbai have made the country Tinder’s largest market in Asia. The company also says India is its “chattiest” market globally, with users using the in-app messaging feature more than any other country.

Tinder has generally had few ad campaigns and its few glossy productions in India have tended to focus on the female experience on the app – a reflection of the predominance of men on the Indian version.

The app, which has an average 3.8 million users globally had the highest number of monthly active users on Android phones in India last month in the Lifestyle category, according to market data and analytics firm, App Annie.

The app is also the third highest earner by revenue across all categories when Google Play & iOS revenues are combined.

“I know the kind of creeps out there on Tinder and other dating apps,” said one of a dozen male users Reuters talked to on Tuesday.

“One extra layer of security doesn’t do much harm to men apart from slimming their chances of striking up a conversation.”

Several female users interviewed by Reuters remained skeptical about the usefulness of the feature and said the change in settings would not do much to change their experience.

“Even after carefully picking someone, if they turn out to be nothing like you imagined, there is always an unmatch option,” said one 25-year-old Bengaluru resident who met her boyfriend through Tinder.
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Music streaming services Spotify and Deezer joined European business and industry bodies in calling on EU regulators to take tougher action to curb what they say are the unfair practices of online platforms.

EU governments are set in the coming weeks to come up with a joint position on a proposed platform-to-business (P2B) law which is meant to ensure greater transparency and fairness in the digital economy.

Driven by concerns over privacy and data protection, the European Union has in recent years introduced tougher rules to regulate online markets dominated by U.S. tech giants such as Google, Apple and Amazon.

But in a joint letter, businesses and industry bodies such as the European Publishers Council and the European Association of Craft, Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises, said the P2B proposal did not go far enough.

“Targeted measures to prevent unfair practices by platforms are needed if the legislation is to promote sustained digital growth,” they said in a joint letter dated Sept. 24 seen by Reuters.

Unveiled by the European Commission in April, the P2B law would force app stores, search engines, e-commerce sites and hotel booking websites such as Expedia to be more transparent about how they rank search results and why they delist some services.

It would also give companies the right to group together and sue online platforms.

The European business and industry groups did not name any platforms in their letter, which was addressed to EU ministers of competitiveness who are due to meet in Brussels on Sept. 27.

“Instead of being gateways that facilitate access, these platforms use their privileged position to become gatekeepers to the digital economy,” they said in the letter.

They also said unfair business practices include large platforms favoring their own services, unilateral and sudden changes in terms and conditions, arbitrary marketing bans, mandatory use of a particular billing system and arbitrary restrictions on data use.

Tech lobbying group CCIA, which represents Google, Amazon and eBay, have previously said there is no evidence of a systemic problem to justify more regulations.

Once EU governments have decided on a joint position, they will have to negotiate with the Commission and European Parliament on the final legislation.
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It’s drawing time at this suburban nursery school in Japan, but instead of crayons, tiny fingers are tapping on colors on iPad screens and taking selfies. Digital schooling has arrived in this nation long known for its zealous commitment to “three R’s” education.

Coby Preschool, in a small town northeast of Tokyo, is among nearly 400 kindergartens and nursery schools in Japan that are using smartphone software applications designed especially for preschoolers called KitS.

That’s only about 1 percent of this nation’s kindergartens and nursery schools. But it’s a start. Coby is helping lead a national initiative in “digital play.”

Parents everywhere worry their children might fall behind, and Japan is no exception.

The government has recently made strengthening technology education national policy even as it struggles to meet its goal of supplying one digital device — computer or tablet — for every three children.

Digital play

With KitS, developed by Tokyo-based startup SmartEducation, children color birds and flowers that appear to come alive as three-dimensional computer graphics. Children also draw various creatures that, when captured as computer images, swim or float around in virtual landscapes.

In a recent session, children got a triangle image on their iPads and were asked to draw on it with digital colors, store that image, and draw another one to create a two-screen story.

The usually shy children burst into an uproar, brainstorming happily about what the triangle might represent: a sandwich, a rice ball, a dolphin, a roof, a mountain.

The children were then encouraged to come to the front of the class and explain what they had drawn as the images were shown on a large screen.

“There is no right or wrong answer,” said Akihito Minabe, the preschool principal leading the session.

The point is to nurture creativity, focus and leadership skills.

“They think on their own, they learn it’s OK to think freely, and it’s fun to come up with ideas,” said Minabe.

 In the U.S., 98 percent of children age 8 and under have a mobile device in their homes, while 43 percent have their own tablet, according to The Genius of Play, a U.S. program that researches education and play.

That’s similar to Japan, where each adult has an average of more than one smartphone and about half of preschoolers have access to a mobile device, according to Japanese government data.

 In many U.S., Asian and European preschools and elementary schools, teachers use technology to present stories, music and other information. Educators are also studying children’s social development through how they learn to share digital devices.

Getting smarter?

Much of what’s driving the adoption of tablets in U.S. preschools is a belief, founded or not, that an early start will make kids smarter at technology, said Patricia Cantor, a professor of early childhood education at Plymouth State University in New Hampshire.

However, early research into how tablets and apps affect learning for kids ages 2 to 5 is inconclusive.

“Touchscreen stuff is pretty intuitive. They don’t need training,” Cantor said.

Some studies show positive outcomes among young children using mobile devices to improve their literacy, science or math skills, but there’s little research comparing tablet-assisted learning to more conventional teaching approaches, according to a review of 19 studies by Christothea Herodotou, a lecturer at The Open University in the United Kingdom.

Herodotou said it’s unclear which features might help or hinder learning. Devices and apps can also be misused — for instance, to keep children occupied so teachers can do other things.

“Even if it’s designed to encourage learning or exploration or curiosity, it may not be used in that way,” said Cantor. “There’s so much junk out there.”

Still, the target age for “digital play” is getting ever younger.

Experts have known for years that playing is how children learn, says Ken Seiter, Executive Vice President at The Toy Association, a nonprofit, which represents businesses that design, produce, license and deliver youth-entertainment products.

Toys can teach toddlers simple programming or use augmented reality to bring story characters digitally alive, said Seiter, whose organization spearheads The Genius of Play, a U.S.-based program that researches education and play.

Japan’s take

Japan’s classrooms tend to be more structured than in the West, with students often acting in unison as they line up, bow and chant together. Children tend to be passive, and the emphasis is on the group rather than individuals. Youngsters, even some preschoolers, attend extracurricular cram schools.

KitS’ designers have sought to make activities fun. One aim appears to be nurturing outspokenness.

Yuhei Yamauchi, a professor of information studies at the University of Tokyo and KitS adviser, sees practical benefits.

By the time today’s 5-year-olds start work, most jobs will require computer skills. Given Japan’s shrinking population, people may work into their 80s, shifting jobs several times. Digital skills are more critical than ever, he said.

Digital tools deliver the equivalents of libraries and museums at a child’s fingertips, said Ron Shumsky, a child psychologist who works in Japan. That can be addictive, he cautions, and students must be taught safe and responsible “Digital citizenship,” he said.

It’s so compelling it pulls you in,” he said. “It keeps you wanting more.”

Experts warn that staring for too long at screens can damage eyesight and deter creative thinking. It’s a complex problem, since children may see their parents immersed in devices themselves.

KitS limits each session on the iPad to 15 minutes. Classes are held just 30 times a year.

Family dialogue

At the preschool in Yoshikawa, a sleepy Tokyo bed town ringed by lush rice paddies, the children have mastered time-lapse photography using their iPads.

Japanese preschools like Coby are subsidized by local governments. Fees, including meals, are on a sliding scale based on income with the poorest families paying nothing.

Each preschool pays SmartEducation an initial 500,000 yen ($4,400), not including the cost of the iPads, and 30,000 yen ($265) more a month for maintenance. The cost for training teachers is included.

Students use the iPad message function to send their parents photos of themselves in action and share trailers of their upcoming performances.

The kids are keen to talk about it, and parents say the endeavor encourages communication beyond the usual daily stream of commands: Eat dinner, take a bath, go to bed.

“I realized I tend not to wait for what the children have to say,” said hospital worker Masami Uno, whose son, 5-year-old Ayumu, and 2-year-old daughter attend Coby. “It made me stop and think about that.”

The kids AP spoke with favored the usual sorts of career goals, saying they wanted to be ballerinas and soccer players. None said they wanted to be a computer programmer when they grow up.

But they like the KitS.

“It’s fun,” said Yume Miyasaka, 6.

She noted with a little pride that her father uses an iPad for work. But, referring to her iPad creation, she said, “He usually doesn’t draw shaved ice.”
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