Patent ID: 8315644

Claim:
A method for traffic control in a cellular telephony system, said cellular telephony system comprising a number of cells, each cell comprising at least one Radio Base Station, RBS, for the control of traffic to and from users in the cell, the cellular telephony system also comprising at least one Radio Network Controller, RNC, for the control of a number of Radio Base stations, in which cellular telephony system the traffic between an RBS and an RNC can comprise a number of flows, the method controlling said flows from the Radio Base Stations in the cellular telephony system to their RNC, the method comprising: using one control function for each controlled flow from each of said Radio Base Stations, said control function comprising a congestion detection function, detecting, using the congestion detection function, a presence or absence of congestion in the traffic from an RBS to an RNC, upon detection of congestion, sending a control frame from the RNC to the RBS indicating detection of congestion to trigger the RBS to reduce, using the congestion detection function, a bit rate of the congested traffic, and subsequently in the absence of congestion, increasing, using the congestion detection function, the bit rate of the previously congested traffic, wherein the control frame is only sent from the RNC to the RBS to indicate detection of congestion if a previous such control frame has not been sent from the RNC to the RBS within a predetermined first time interval.