Patent ID: 8031665

Claim:
A method of operating a wireless communication system that has a plurality of sectors, the method comprising: allocating, by a reservation system, connection identifiers into at least a first group of the connection identifiers and a second group of the connection identifiers; associating, by the reservation system, a set of the sectors with a reservation zone, associating the reservation zone with the first group of the connection identifiers, and associating the first group of the connection identifiers with a quality-of-service level; in response to a first service request from a first user, determining, by the reservation system, that the first user has the quality-of-service level, and in response, reserving one of the connection identifiers in the first group for the first user and using the reserved one of the connection identifiers in the first group to communicate with the first user in all of the sectors associated with the reservation zone; in response to a second service request from a second user, determining, by the reservation system, that the second user does not have the quality-of-service level, and in response, using different ones of the connection identifiers in the second group to communicate with the second user in each one of the sectors.