multiuser channel 39 s controller during periods of high congestion data is rerouted to other channels based on its priority 70 for instance best effort dedicated traffic data is rerouted and mandatory common control data is not by rerouting data prior to queuing retransmissions will not be required accordingly the amount of queued data is reduced resulting in lower data latency additionally since the rerouted data is never queued the duplication of data as experienced in the prior art is eliminated a prioritization scheme 72 for use with a fach 58 is shown in fig5 since the dsch h arq of the mac sh have mandatory shared control data they have the highest priority highest although the h arq of the mac d has mandatory control data being dedicated it is assigned a slightly lower priority high the ccch and dcch are used for signaling and have the next level of priority medium the lowest level of priority is assigned to the dtch because it has best effort dedicated traffic data to facilitate this prioritization scheme 72 for the fach 58 modifications to the rnc 36 are required as shown in fig3 the prior art mac d 66 controls the dcch dtch and mac d 39 s h arq as shown in fig5 each of these sources has a different priority since this data is multiplexed prior to prioritization at the mac d 66 the multiplexer of the mac d 66 is moved to the mac c 60 to allow prioritization at the mac c 60 alternatively the mac d 66 may send the priority and class mandatory or best effort such as by.