Patent ID: 7944823

Claim:
An apparatus for communicating data, comprising: a cell site element associated with a base transceiver station and operable to: receive a plurality of packets associated with a communications flow, the packets including a plurality of subrates; detect a congestion condition via a measurement of a level in a receive jitter buffer; drop individual subrates from subsequent backhaul packets until congestion subsides to enter congestion abatement; and add single timeslots of the flow back one at a time during the congestion abatement by: adding a timeslot; determining if there is a next congestion condition during the congestion abatement; if there is no next congestion condition during the congestion abatement, adding a subsequent timeslot during the congestion abatement; and if there is a next congestion condition during the congestion abatement, simultaneously excluding all non-critical timeslots in response to detecting the next congestion condition during the congestion abatement.