3GSM Daily

More power to your ARPU
24 February 2004

By James Hay, co-founder, Splashpower

Colour screens, cameras, MMS, Bluetooth connectivity and a host of new data-driven services can certainly be good for an operator's ARPU. But what good are all these services when your battery is out of power - again?

We live in a world tied to the wall-socket. For all the freedom of wireless communications we are ultimately bound by the ritual of regularly tethering our portable devices to a wall-socket to keep them going.

Today, we are all familiar with the array of wireless devices available, and have long had to endure the necessary array of chargers to support them. The addition of wireless peripherals, such as Bluetooth headsets, has spawned a completely new category of 'things you need a charger for'. As well as possessing more devices, our average gadget is getting more power-hungry. Sure, battery chemistry has improved, but add increased usage of integrated digital cameras, colour screens, gaming, and MP3s and battery life is usually still inadequate.

But it's not just that devices are taking more juice; charging is a real hassle. How many times have you arrived at your travel destination only to find that you forgot one of your chargers? Frantic searches for a replacement charger are an all-too-familiar feature of our travels. And even then, it's not unusual to find that in your new location your model isn't a popular one and finding a compatible charger is near impossible. Flat batteries and lost revenue for mobile operators are a direct consequence.

This raises a serious issue: How is all this affecting that critical metric, ARPU? What use are snazzy services, when the devices that deliver them are increasingly out of power and a pain to recharge?

Getting power to portable devices is not an unexplored issue. It has been the focus of a series of recent products that attempt to resolve traditional charging frustrations. In fact, the range of offerings that continue to come to market is testament to the persistence of the problem. Wind-up chargers, zinc-air power packs, USB chargers and cumbersome multi-tipped universal chargers have solved specific problems for niche market sectors, but none has met with widespread mainstream success. Why? It all boils down to a simple point. As one major handset manufacturer puts it: "People don't want to have to think about charging their devices. They just want to use them."

For most of us, charging is a headache and one that we suffer as a fundamental part of our day-to-day routines: we eat, we sleep, we charge. We shouldn't have to worry about recharging. But we do. We have to remember to charge regularly. We have to find the right charger. We have to free up wall sockets so we can plug in. In our homes and offices we have to put up with a spaghetti of cables taking over our desk environment. We have to remember to take a collection of wall-warts with us when we travel and then we have to suffer the extra weight and bulk in our luggage.

What is needed is a sustainable infrastructure that users can tap into to power-up. In much the same way that the GSM standard supports a global user group with all sorts of different terminal hardware, a universal standard for powering portable devices could have huge benefits - not least for device OEMs who could look forward to not having to provide a charger with every device they ship. Chargers currently add more than $1bn to the bill-of-materials cost of devices shipped each year and additional transport and packaging costs push this figure higher still. Perhaps the industry should instead consider investing some of this in a standardisation initiative. After all, how many old chargers lie cluttering up your cupboards and drawers?

Establishing a universal power standard has in the past been constrained partly by the mechanics. For example, if you standardise on a device's connector, then that connector size and shape will need to be incorporated into and will constrain every device manufacturer's designs. Add to this the problems of dealing with different power requirements of different devices and it's easy to see why so little progress has been made.

A move to a different style of charging - wireless power technology - can sidestep many of these issues. One solution allows a user to power or charge a selection of devices with different power requirements at the same time. It is based on a universal wireless platform approximately the size of a mouse mat and is known as a SplashPad. Throw any number of compatible devices on the SplashPad and they power up. The technology uses inductive coupling, which means you don't need any wires, connectors or contacts between the pad and the device. It's a truly wireless power solution.

But the vision for the technology does not involve just selling some cool new charger, it's about creating a new infrastructure so that people can go home and not have to worry about plugging five devices into five separate chargers; simply drop the phone on the family SplashPad and avoid the scramble for a spare socket. The same could apply to a friend's house, a cafe, restaurant, hotel or airport lounge. Wherever people go, they would know that they can re-power their devices. As power expert Lily Cheng puts it: "This is not about giving people more gadgets, it's about freeing them from the hassles of the ones they've already got."

The mobile phone liberated us and gave us the power to communicate away from our walls, homes and desks. But that charger lead keeps wanting to tie us back down again. It's time we cut away the last wire.

The splashpower.com web site is a trading name of Splashpower Limited.
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