Congestion/load indication for high speed packet access

Abstract

A radio access network (20) comprises a radio network controller (26) and a radio base station (28). The radio network controller (26) is configured to perform admission control and to allocate resources of a cell. The radio base station (28) is configured to determine load/congestion on a high speed shared channel and to generate an indication of the load/congestion for transmission to the radio network controller. In some example embodiments and modes, at least one of the radio network controller and the radio base station is configured to allocate at least some of the resources for the high speed shared channel to support a guaranteed service and also to allocate at least some resources to support a non-guaranteed service. In some example implementations of this aspect, a user(s) of the non-guaranteed service is permitted to use the resources up to a reserved resource level of resources. According to another non-limiting aspect of the technology, the radio base station is further configured to generate a recommended action for dealing with the load/congestion.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.