The Indian government applied blanket bans on internet access in Kashmir after it revoked partial autonomy in the region. The measure was meant to enforce security in the disputed territory, but it also cut off businesses and other facilities that needed at least some high-speed internet to thrive.

The restoration also comes at an important moment. With the world in the midst of a pandemic, fast mobile data could be vital for education, online shopping and India’s planned health ID cards. In that light, 4G service could represent a safety measure while it’s still risky to visit others.

Stadia now allows you to stream games over 4G and 5G connections, provided you’re willing to try the functionality out as part of Google’s latest experiment. You can enable the feature by launching the Stadia app on your phone, tapping on your avatar, and navigating to the Experiments section of the settings menu. Keep in mind Google is currently rolling out the feature to users, so you may not see the option right away. 

When Stadia launched in 2019, the only way to use the service over a cellular connection was to use tethering to trick the app into thinking it was connected to the internet over WiFi. By contrast, Microsoft’s competing Project xCloud service has offered cellular streaming since day one.   

Loon CEO Alastair Westgarth noted that Vodacom is one of Africa’s largest carriers, providing service to tens of millions of people in multiple countries. “We view this as the first step to a larger partnership that will allow us to serve more of those users throughout Africa,” he said in a statement.

So far, Loon has landed deals to supply network to underserved regions in Puerto Rico, Kenya and Peru. The company recently created the HAPS alliance with telecoms and other firms including Deutsche Telekom, Softbank, Airbus, Nokia and Telefonica to promote the use of stratospheric balloons for internet services. The company teamed with AT&T earlier this month in a project to provide internet to crisis-hit regions.

In Mozambique, Loon and Vodacom must first install terrestrial infrastructure to connect the balloons to Vodacom’s core networks. Loon will also fly test balloons to learn the local stratospheric wind patterns and ensure that the final balloons remain in the service area. With all that complete, service can start sometime “in the coming months,” the companies said.

The Companies Registry listing also shows October 22nd, 2019 as the date of Missan’s appointment, which is likely the date of Fitbit’s acquisition as well. If true, then Doki got lucky by sealing the deal right before Google announced that it was buying Fitbit for $2.1 billion — pending government approval, of course. What’s more interesting is that Google likely knew about Fitbit’s intention to acquire Doki early on, but that’s not to say we can expect a Google-branded kids smartwatch any time soon.

As to why Fitbit had to rely on external help with its first 4G kids smartwatch, I suspect the company was after Doki’s self-built platform, which offers various safety tracking features, video calling and voice calling for both mobile and desktop. The startup’s last smartwatch, the DokiPal, even included a physical “Doki SIM” with unlimited data in over 50 countries for $9.99 per month. It’s unclear whether all of these features will be carried over to the Fitbit-branded kids smartwatch, though I’m pretty sure we’ll be seeing some of Fitbit’s fitness features on it.

It makes sense for Fitbit to move deeper into the kids market. So far, the wearable giant has only made two generations of the Ace fitness trackers for children, both of which lack cellular connectivity for always-on tracking and communication. As for the competition in the kids smartwatch space, there are surprisingly few players out in the West. According to Bryan Ma, IDC’s Vice President of Client Devices, a staggering 15 million cellular kids smartwatches were shipped last year (up from 9 million the year before), 97-percent of which were to Mainland China. The top vendor was BBK, which also owns Vivo, Oppo (ahem), OnePlus and Realme.

“There are a lot of reasons why this has largely been a China-focused phenomenon, most notably because many of the brands aren’t well known outside of China,” Ma added. “Distribution tends to be limited in other countries, and it’s not always easy to get a telco plan either. There are likely cultural differences too, where some might find it overprotective and even invasive.”

As a notable Western brand, Fitbit may have a chance when it breaks into the Chinese kids smartwatch market, but it may have to put in extra elbow grease to convince parents in the West about its upcoming product. At least with its Ace family, Fitbit has already laid the foundation with COPPA-compliant data collection processes, in order to protect children’s privacy. The rest will be up to Fitbit’s marketing arm (and eventually Google’s as well).

There’s also WiFi 6 connectivity, but the newly-added optional 4G LTE means you’ll get a faster and more reliable connection when you’re out and about. Basically, you won’t have to rely on feeble connections from coffee shops and bars. And there’s an optional fingerprint reader, to help keep your device extra secure.

And it looks good. As well as being slimmer, it’ll come in a trio of colours, including a seamless 3D metal styling. Natural silver and warm gold will drop first, starting at $499 and $749 respectively. They’re both available now from Best Buy, and from May, HP will be offering it in a calming forest teal shade with a starting price of $550.

In May, the US Commerce Department added Huawei to the “Entity List,” banning US companies from doing business with it unless they have a special license. Since then it has extended temporary licenses for existing customers, like mobile phone users and rural telecoms that use its equipment. The most recent extension is set to expire next week, but the New York Times reports the Trump administration is set to extend it a third time, for a length of time that is unknown.

This deadline is arriving against the backdrop of negotiation over trade between the US and Chinese government, and the report also indicates that the administration is considering “product specific” licenses that would allow some companies to keep supplying Huawei.

From March 2020, 4G will be available on the platforms and tunnels of a section of the Jubilee line between Westminster and Canning Town. It will be available in ticket halls and corridors as well, except for the very busy London Bridge and Waterloo stations which may be added later in the year.

The Tube network is an infamous “not-spot” within the capital which the government has been trying to rectify since 2005 (for those keeping score, that’s 14 years ago). A major proposal was put forward in 2015 and the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, promised to deliver 4G by 2019. There were high hopes when Transport for London (TfL) open bidding to build the infrastructure for the service in 2017, but it’s taken until now to get it off the ground.

The network of tunnels which form the Underground are hard to connect up because they are old and narrow and have many bends which disrupt signals. TfL have addressed this issue by installing hundreds of miles of cabling which acts as an aerial.

London’s Underground network currently offers WiFi provided by Virgin Media at over 260 stations, but this is only available to customers of certain carriers. The new 4G system should allow anyone with a connected device to access the internet, although the four biggest UK phone network operators are still in discussion with TfL about accessing the infrastructure.

What he didn’t expect, back when he was helping define 4G, was that video streaming would explode in popularity the way it did and become the most obvious benefit of the new network technology. “4G made it possible to do video streaming, which was not conceivable before,” Grilli told Engadget at Google I/O this week.

The biggest users of 4G’s video streaming capacity today are Facebook and YouTube, according to Grilli, something the world wouldn’t have imagined back when the standard was being drawn up. The increased bandwidth paved the way for Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook and Twitter to add video posts to users’ feeds, and the explosion of mobile video spurred generations of flagship phones designed to display and capture high-quality footage.

During his 20 years at Qualcomm, Grilli has worked on technologies for UMTS, 4G and now 5G standards. He thinks 5G will spur the same sort of unanticipated trend the way 4G did for video streaming. “Maybe there will be a moment when some developer will come up with an application that doesn’t run well on this generation that will work well on the next to become the killer app,” he said.

As for the “killer use case” for 5G? That depends on developers, and that’s why this week’s announcement that Android Q is designed to let apps detect the 5G network performance matters. Basically, Qualcomm and Google extended an existing Android API tool that provides developers with network performance information to work with 5G as well. Since the calculation at the modem level is different for 4G and 5G, Grilli said, some work had to be done to enable Android Q to deliver this information to developers.

Armed with that data, developers can code different options into their app. “I can enable some new attributes of the app that I couldn’t use before because it wasn’t feasible,” Grilli explained. Say you find you’re experiencing high throughput and fast speeds. A video streaming app, for example, can choose to immediately push through high-res video at 60 fps or 120 fps, while loading just 720p clips at 30 fps on slower networks.

YouTube is one of the biggest users of this tool, Grilli said, as it checks a device’s downlink speed to adjust buffer rates. Grilli also gave an example of how game developers could use this feature to create a “5G mode.” Players on faster networks can compete against users with similar latency and speeds, instead of having an advantage over others on slower connections. This advanced mode could also serve up higher frame rates for smoother gameplay.

Grilli and his colleague Ignacio Contreras spent Thursday morning at a “Thinking in 5G” workshop with Google’s vice president of marketing, platforms and ecosystems Bob Borchers (and close to 100 developers). After Borchers and Grilli gave a brief presentation, developers broke into groups to come up with proposals on ways to use 5G. Each team’s favorite idea was submitted into a pool, and participants were given stickers to vote for the best suggestions.

While Grilli believes some popular uses for 5G will involve 4K and VR streaming, many of the ideas developers came up with at the workshop had to do with live sports experiences and broadcasting over multiple cameras.

There were some unique, intriguing ideas, too. One participant from Korea suggested using 5G and AR to leave video restaurant reviews that could be overlaid on top of the actual location. Future guests could stream the clip over 5G and see the reviewer inside the restaurant talking about their experience.

A woman with a passion for music suggested tapping 5G’s promised low latency for live jam sessions with remote instrumentalists. Playing in sync over existing networks has been challenging since there are delays between one musician hitting a note and it actually sounding on the other end. If 5G’s latency is low enough, it could enable real-time remote jam sessions with no lag.

Whether 5G truly changes our lives hinges on how we use it. Developers are a key piece of the puzzle, and at this Google I/O, they certainly appeared to be thinking about the next-gen technology. As networks come online and compatible devices begin to proliferate, the next step is clear: apps must evolve and make full use of 5G’s promised benefits. “We need to encourage and explain to them what 5G is and why they need to pay attention to it,” Grilli said. “If they don’t, someone else will and they’ll be left behind.”