* Phone chargers might finally get standardized
When I was first struggling to learn about computer networking standards 100 years ago, a friend who happened to be big in the IEEE boiled the whole thing down for me with a light bulb analogy.
“You just want things to work,” he sagely observed, pointing above our heads to a hanging light fixture. “Plugging a light bulb into a socket shouldn’t be a complicated, dramatic deal. Same thing for networks.”
Those words came flooding back to me last week when a simple, but potentially mighty, announcement came out of GSMA Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. At long last, mobile phone chargers might actually get standardized.
I’ve been grousing for years over the folly of everyone having to get a new charger whenever they get a new phone. A universal charger has long seemed a no-brainer – at least, for the consumer. But it hasn’t necessarily been in suppliers’ best interests to standardize it. With every phone sale also necessitating a charger sale, practically a whole market exists by default.
However, it seems that an alliance of 13 mobile operators and handset makers around the globe have now agreed to use a standard Micro-USB connection for all mobile phone chargers in the future. The angle is that it’s the green thing to do. (Yup, and it would have been environmentally friendly a decade ago, too. But better late than never, I suppose.)
There are some technical issues to be worked out as the industry plans ahead for higher and higher data speeds. But theoretically, I’ll be able to use someone else’s charger when I’m without mine, and they can use mine when they don’t have theirs. One charger might last me through several phones. At the rate new phones and new versions of new phones ship, at least we can reduce some of the accessory charges with each swap.
It’s not clear yet when the nirvana charger is to become reality. But it has been reported that the GSMA’s aim is for half of mobile phones shipped in 2012 to use it. In the meantime, I’m wondering: How many telecom engineers does it take to change a light bulb?
