is a detailed view of the process by which a subscriber unit 101 may request subchannel 300 allocations from the base station 170 according to the invention in a first state 502 the process is in an idle state at some point data becomes ready to transmit and state 504 is entered where the fact that data is ready to be transmitted may be detected by an input data buffer in the data handler 426 indicated that there is data ready in state 504 a request is made such as via a control channel 440 for the allocation of a subchannel to subscriber unit 101 if a subchannel is not immediately available a pacing state 506 may be entered in which the subscriber unit simply waits and queues its request for a subchannel to be assigned eventually a subchannel 300 is granted by the base station and the process continues to state 508 in this state data transfer may then begin using the single assigned subchannel the process will continue in this state as long as the single subchannel 300 is sufficient for maintaining the required data transfer and or is being utilized however if the input buffer should become empty such as notified by the data handler 426 then the process will proceed to a state 510 in this state 510 the subchannel will remain assigned in the event that data traffic again resumes in this case such as when the input buffer begins to once again become full and data is again ready to transmit then the process returns to state 508 however from state 510 should a low traffic timer expire then the process proceeds.