Vodafone's Arun Sarin only got a smattering of applause from the hundreds of people packed into the CTIA Keynote room this morning when he said the wireless industry needs to settle on one 4G standard and avoid dueling approaches to broadband access.

Maybe it was too early and the crowd hadn’t recovered from a raucous night of hitting the craps tables, or maybe the idea was too far-fetched.

Or maybe it just makes too much sense.

As Sarin pointed out, the wireless industry has already seen what happens when it pursues multiple means of access. TDMA versus CDMA battles in the U.S. left the industry here well behind the Europeans, who had agreed on a single approach to the digital upgrade in GSM.

A single standard won’t result in a loss of competition, as wireless infrastructure vendors are free to duke it out in other essential ways. Economies of scale and speed to market are both advantages of a single standard.

And, as Arun pointed out, it’s not like there’s nothing at stake. The whole industry is, after its initial reluctance, lurching toward openness. That opens the door to innovation by Internet companies and software developers who won’t be particularly concerned about what technology is driving the underlying network as long as that technology offers the throughput and reliability the mobile Internet will need.

Wireless operators can’t afford distractions as they focus on developing services for their current and potential future customers and staying ahead of the curve to maintain their customer relationships, and not find themselves reduced to dumb pipe status.

Those who have a financial stake in WiMAX will, of course, disagree with Sarin that LTE needs to be the longer-term standard bearer for 4G, with WiMAX reduced to a subset. But at some point, the operators themselves have the power to determine whether the WiMAX-LTE battle is fought along the same lines as previous battles.

I agree with Sarin that there’s a much more important war to be fought -- the one for the mobile Internet customer.

E-mail me at cwilson3@telephonyonline.com.