EDITORIAL (WiMAX Day). You don’t get to be the CEO of the world’s largest mobile operator (in revenue) by making mistakes. Arun Sarin, the CEO of Vodafone, is no different. His public comments at the 3GSM Conference in Barcelona last week were made quite deliberately, and many in the mobile industry have yet to come to terms with the enormity of what Sarin said.

His urgent message to the slumbering industry voiced what few even dare to contemplate. In essense he said that the voice-centric technology used by mobile operators throughout the world is being rendered obsolete by competing technologies in the rapidly changing data-hungry world.

Mobile operators have been desperate to develop a more data-friendly technology, yet 3G has been a damp squib, accounting for less than 10% of Vodafone revenues says Sarin.

Technologies such as HSDPA have a limited shelf life, and all hopes for a 3G broadband solution are pinned on 3GPP Long Term Evolution (LTE), the future upgrade of old UMTS technology masquerading its way into the IP-OFDM world of tomorrow.

However, the Vodafone boss stated that LTE isn’t ready, not by a long way. The standards haven’t even been set! What he also said was that WiMAX is here today, and as WiMAX networks roll-out, they will make LTE irrelevant. No, Sarin didn’t make a slip of the tongue.

He is simply one of the first telecom executives of his stature to say publicly what many in the industry already know. WiMAX will lead to a fundamental paradigm shift for the mobile business.