Newer generation cellular communications systems, such as a 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) Long Term Evolution (LTE) cellular communications system, promise the delivery of services, such as wirelessly streaming high-definition video to a mobile user travelling in a vehicle, that were not possible only a few years ago. Due to the nature of wireless communications with mobile devices, the quality of a channel between a network node and a mobile device may change from moment to moment. As the quality of the channel declines, an increasingly large number of data packets are not successfully communicated from one end of the channel to the other end of the channel, and must be retransmitted. At peak usage times, a cellular communications system may be heavily loaded; consequently, there may be substantial competition for the finite resources, such as time slots and frequencies, which are required to communicate data between devices in the cellular communications system. Retransmissions of packets only exacerbate this situation. Accordingly, there is a need for mechanisms and techniques that help increase the likelihood of successful transmissions in a cellular communications system to reduce the need for retransmissions.