Nobody’s ever accused Vodafone (NYSE: VOD) CEO Arun Sarin of being a shrinking violet. In an interview with Businessweek, Sarin is typically forthright, admitting that the global telecoms company had vastly overpaid for its 3G license in Germany in 2001—which Sarin now believes would have gone for a tenth of its 6 billion euro price tag in today’s market. He also says that Vodafone has no need to rush into Long Term Evolution (LTE) as the firm has already deployed HSDPA, or 3.5 G on its European networks. Indeed, he noted that Verizon (NYSE: VZ) (which Vodafone has a 45 percent stake in) will need 4G before Vodafone does, as Verizon’s EVDO network doesn’t have the “forward path” that HSDPA gives it.

Sarin also answered the question that most networks try to sidestep of how its relationship with Nokia (NYSE: NOK) is being reshaped, now that the Finnish handset maker has entered the services business. He conceded that the relationship that was once “a straightforward customer-vendor relationship” has now become a “customer-vendor-competitor relationship,” and that the only way they can make this three-tier relationship work is to grow the size of the market. Sarin: “My view is that if we can bake a bigger cake together, and that cake has smaller pieces of it, but net-net we still have more cake, that’s O.K. with me.”

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