Abstract: Systems and techniques are disclosed relating to communications. The systems and techniques involve dividing a plurality of subscriber stations into a plurality of groups, assigning a different plurality of orthogonal codes to each of the groups, the number of the orthogonal codes assigned to one of the groups being less than the number of subscriber stations in said one of the groups, encoding communications to one of the subscriber stations in said one of the groups at a data rate, and determining whether to spread at least a portion of communications to said to one of the subscriber stations with one of the orthogonal codes assigned to said one of the groups as a function of the data rate.