Telecom manufacturers agree on standard phone charger

[pm]

I usually roll my eyes at all the red-tape and regulations in the EU, but every once in a while the regulators over here seem to get it right.

One charger to rule them all, that would be very nice:
http://tech.yahoo.com/news/nm/...m/us_telecom_eu_mobile

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Top mobile telephone suppliers have agreed to back an EU-wide harmonization of phone chargers, the European Commission said on Monday, hailing the pact as good news for consumers and the environment.

The agreement by Nokia, Sony Ericsson and other industry majors will mean phones compatible with standard charging devices are available in Europe from next year, said the EU executive, which has pushed for such a deal.

 

[MustISO]

That would never work in the US. All the phone companies would fight something like that because they couldn't sell their overpriced gear.

 

[DivideBYZero]

All current generation, Flip onwards, BlackBerry devices are microUSB already.

MustISO: The only manufacturer worth paying attention to in the US is Motorola and they have signed up to this. There is no way a manufacturer will make devices with different charging for just the North American market.

 

[erwos]

Didn't Japan already agree on a standard?

 

[pm]

Yes, both China and Japan have standards, but both use telecom systems that aren't compatible with the rest of the world in terms of protocol and frequency, so if they have their own charging standards, they also have their own handsets and manufacturers can just make specific models for that market without standardizing the rest of the world.

I believe that the EU and US markets are so tied together in terms of providers (Verizon is owned by British Vodafone, T-Mobile is German Deutsche Telecom) and handset providers and protocols and frequencies (GSM now, and LTE in the future) that I don't think it's feasible to separate the two markets like you can with countries that are incompatible with everyone else... although maybe the CDMA providers Sprint and Verizon might still be off in their own unstandardized world. But given that both my handset (iPhone) and my wife's cell phone (Nokia) are widely sold in both the US and EU, I can't imagine that they would make totally different charging ports for the EU and US market. I would think an EU standard implies a worldwide standard - at least for GSM phones.

 

[boomhower]

I would have to agree. With more and more handsets being produced on both GSM and CMDA I imagine we will benefit by default. I was pretty irritated when my wife got her Rant and it had micro USB and we had a ton of wall and car chargers that were mini USB from years of Motorola and HTC phones.