ITU approves universal cellphone charger standard

Stuart Corner
Friday, 23 October 2009 01:07

Business IT - Technology

The ITU has given its stamp of approval to an energy-efficient one-size-fits-all new mobile phone charger.

The new 'Universal Charging Solution (UCS)' specifies the Micro-USB interface for connection between phone and charger and a four-star or higher efficiency rating (see below).

It enables the same charger to be used for all future handsets, regardless of make and model. The ITU says the news standard will greatly reduce the number of chargers produced, shipped and subsequently discarded and will enable users worldwide to charge their mobiles from any available charger.

The ITU says the new standard "is based on input from the GSMA, [the GSM Association] which predicts a 50 percent reduction in standby energy consumption, elimination of 51,000 tonnes of redundant chargers, and a subsequent reduction of 13.6 million tonnes in greenhouse gas emissions each year. Standardisation was completed by Study Group 5 - Environment and Climate Change."

This seems rather dismissive of the role of the GSMA, which earlier claimed to have developed the standard. The organisation announced in February that it and 17 mobile operators and manufacturers would develop a standard for a universal, energy-efficient mobile phone charger. They set an ambitious target that by 2012 a "universal charging solution (UCS)" would be widely available in the market worldwide and would use Micro-USB as its interface to the phone.

 They agreed that by 1 January 2012 the majority of all new mobile phone models available would support a universal charging connector and that the majority of chargers shipped would meet the high efficiency targets set out by the OMTP (Open Mobile Terminal Platform), the industry body which has developed the technical requirements behind UCS.

Participants in the initiative included 3 Group, AT&T, KTF, LG, mobilkom Austria, Motorola, Nokia, Orange, Qualcomm, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, Telecom Italia, Telefónica, Telenor, Telstra, T-Mobile and Vodafone.

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