The invention concerns an adaptive link adaptation method and system for a packet data enabled mobile telecommunication network. Data packets are transferred over one or more radio links, each packet is coded using a given coding scheme. Statistical data including channel quality estimates, information about successfully or unsuccessfully received data packets, and information about the used coding schemes are accumulated. Block error rates for one or more coding schemes are determined based on the accumulated statistical data, each block error rate including a function of coding scheme and channel quality estimate. A coding scheme with the best performance for a current data packet to be transmitted over a given radio link with current channel quality is selected based on the determined block error rates.