GSMA UCS campaign gathers steam - and big names

Posted by Chris Garland Wednesday, February 18th, 2009

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The campaign by the GSMA for implementing a Universal Charging Scheme (UCS) by 2012, looks to be gathering steam with operators and device vendors including Vodafone, T-Mobile, Telefonica, Orange, Motorola, Nokia and Sony Ericsson the latest big-name players to join.

Other players that have joined UCS, the cross-industry standard for a universal charger format include Hutchison Whampoa unit 3 Group, AT&T, Telenor, KTF, LG, Mobilkom Austria, Qualcomm, Samsung, Telecom Italia and Telstra.

The GSMA has formed the UCS, an initiative that will aim to implement a for all new mobile devices within the next two years, and intends to have convergent charging using a Micro-USB as the common universal charging interface and that the universal standard will ready for release worldwide by Jan. 1, 2012.

The fact that so many big names have already given their support to the initiative underlines the industry-wide need to create a converged standard to avoid duplication of formats.

Some industry observers have said that to sustain revenues and profitability, pricing structures will need to be linked to network transportation and other operator costs, with a pricing structure requiring differentiated charging per network. However, the initial costs associated with implementing UCS can reasonably be expected to pay for themselves even in the short to medium term.

The unanimous support for the initiative by a host of leading players, - both operators and vendors – is also indicative of awareness from different companies that such a move makes sense in terms of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), as a long-term commitment to minimizing environmental impact.

The GSMA estimates that connections and energy-efficient chargers will cut standby energy consumption roughly in half, could eliminate up to 51,000 tons of duplicate chargers and have benefits for end-users because of simplified charging for devices with a converged standard, which can be used for future device models.

A converged charging standard will have a “four star” or higher efficiency rating – making converged charges up to three times as energy-efficient as unrated chargers, according to the UCS group. Additionally, fewer chargers being manufactured each year will reduce greenhouse gases in manufacturing and transporting replacement chargers by 13.6-21.8 million tons a year.