Here's an example where regulation might actually provide better services to the market:
Brussels wants uniform mobile phone chargers:
http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/7xczc/brussels_wants_uniform_mobile_phone_chargers/
http://translate.google.com/translate?prev=_t&hl=nl&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nu.nl%2Finternet%2F1917398%2Fbrussel-wil-uniforme-stekker-gsm-opladers.html&sl=auto&tl=en&history_state0=
Bruxelles - European Commisioner Günter Verheugen (industry) wants that mobile phone manufacturers come up with standard connectors for recharging and microphones. He hopes that the industry will voluntarily come to standardization. Should that not happen, he will attempt to introduce regulations. Verheugen's spokesperson has confirmed this in saturday's Telegraaf (dutch newspaper, red.). The commissioner wants to end current practices, where mobile phone manufacturers such as Nokia and Sony continue to introduce new models of adapters to the marketplace. This means the consumer will have to replace their current chargers. Environment VVD (dutch political party, red.) member of the european parliament Toine Manders has pushed towards standardization of the plugs as well. According to him it's also of environmental benefit if old chargers do not end up in wastebins. In a reply Manders states he is happy with Verheugen's announcement. "This proves that you can achieve real results as a European Commisioner"
Seems like a valid point. For some reason mobile phone makers each have different chargers and USB adapters, so if you want to use another phone, you need to buy the whole suite of accessories for it - new car charger, new headset, new USB cable, new normal charger, etc. There seems to be no rational reason behind this - nothing that helps the client anyway. So what do you guys think?
One counter-argument I could think of is that this stiffles competition in the battery industry. Having the same adapters means they must use roughly the same parameters in battery design.
I personally am willing to pay extra for a phone with a common headset specification. My Nokia phone can only use Nokia adapters.
Then you do that. Leave the rest of us alone. If no firm sees a profit in it and you think there is one, gather capital and start innovating. If there isn't a profit to be had, there is no reason for the investment to be undertaken.
To darkness I condemn you...
If there were one universally appealing design for power adapters, we would already have it. Say I have two phones, a top of the line pda phone with high definition video output, and a $30 nokia I use at work. I want a combination power adapter/hdmi cable for my pda phone. Under this regulation, either I can't get one (meaning I have to purchase three cables total) or I must buy two (meaning I have to pay extra for a cable that the nokia can't use). Some savings! To add insult to injury, the phones and adapters are now more expensive to account for the cost of compliance with the regulation that is there for "my" benefit AND I'm paying some bureaucrat to impose those costs on the manufacturer! Not to mention, if I want to purchase a phone that can only be charged with a proprietary connector to a twelve volt car battery that is being charged by a hamster in a wheel turning a small generator, that is my right.
By the way, several companies are producing universal chargers and small, very inexpensive adapters to connect their chargers to any phone. Market 1, government 0!
Why don't we standardize video game consoles then? I think it's a shame that I can't play Super Mario 64 on my PlayStation. These greedy video game companies want to ripp me off by making me buy new consoles every other year!
There are little technical reasons why we couldn't use a another cable headset or charger adaptor. The fact that the rest of the electronic industry uses standardised headsets is proof of this. No need for cellphone experts.
What if each cellphone maker used their own BlueTooth standard? So then you'd have to buy only their bluetooth headsets.
If customers are so happy with this, why don't they tell cell phone producers?
People can only 'tell' the phone producers using the market, but any cellphone producer that would make a standardised adapter would find that it loses profit on the proprietary adapters.
when you first posted it, i picked up an ambigioius vibe, you were curious what we would say of the proposals. in terms of your response you seem to come out in favour of the proposed legislation. do i take it that the purpose of your thread was to announce that you are in some respects a socialist?
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Fools! not to see that what they madly desire would be a calamity to them as no hands but their own could bring
xSFx:There are little technical reasons why we couldn't use a another cable headset or charger adaptor. The fact that the rest of the electronic industry uses standardised headsets is proof of this. No need for cellphone experts. What if each cellphone maker used their own BlueTooth standard? So then you'd have to buy only their bluetooth headsets.
Then the question remains, if cell phone companies are just greedy, why do they limit themselves to building different recharging adapters? If most other electronic gadgets have common adapters because it is cost-effective, why would cell phone companies possibly not do this?As a customer, of course, that sounds great to me. Not having to buy a new recharger every time I buy a new phone. Of course, I have no idea what other kinds of trouble I might invoke with this regulation, so I really don't have any cares. But since Günter Verheugen has, to my information, never been involved with any kind of cell phone business on a professional level, I doubt that he knows much better.
Well ... how come, then, that standardization is common practice in other industries?
In principle I am against regulation, but I'm just not dogmatic about it.
In this case, at least, regulation seems to give a better local optimum than the solution currently available through the already-regulated market.
How is standardized charging going to be innovated?
xSFx:He hopes that the industry will voluntarily come to standardization. Should that not happen, he will attempt to introduce regulations.
Standardize voluntarily, or else!!!!
I was thinking it's something people would eventually ask for voluntarily and was thinking of regulation as a means to speed it up. It's just like the difference between cars in the UK and cars elsewhere.
Why do people go on the left side of the road? Because of tradition - people always did that.
RogueMerc: What would happen is that cell phone manufacturers would have to go through additional layers of bureaucracy to get anything done.
This is similar to how the FAA certifies airplanes and avionics. The process the FAA uses goes something like this:
So all this work gets put into making government standards, but at the end of the day the government certification people apply their own interpretation to that standard.
I have an HTC phone that has just one connector: mini-usb. It does the sync and the charge. At this point, this is probably a 'standard', since the Jabra Bluetooth Wireless stereo headphones I bought also has a single mini-usb port that charges and serves as a wired connection to a PC for audio over cable. I bought both of these without considering the connector at all. The wall-charger that came with my phone and the one that came with my BT headphones are completely interchangeable, as are the data-cables provided by each device. Additionally, each device is charged from either the chargers, or the USB port of a PC.
Despite the neatness of the above port, who says that the mini-USB port would be the standard chosen by a government, and who says that all governments would chose the same standard?
Suppose the mini-USB port was chosen. What happens as the serial data connections to PC's start to be improved? Already e-SATA could possibly be the next main serial data connection, but maybe it will be something else entirely. Whatever it is, I bet it won't be compatible with current USB connectors. So for the multi-year transition period away from USB to whatever, will we have phones that need to retain the old USB connector for charger purposes due to govt mandates or regulations, and have the new connector for data-sync purposes?
Of course, we will probably have many more years of phones that don't do data-sync at all. Since there is already a range of 'standard' chargers you can get at any electronics store, it would make sense that these phones have a port that can use those types of chargers.
I don't see any value in govt stepping in here. At all. Not even maybe.
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