APPARATUS, METHOD AND COMPUTER PROGRAM PRODUCT PROVIDING SEMI-DYNAMIC PERSISTENT ALLOCATION

A network element sets up a connection with an individual user equipment UE, provides an indicator that informs that a particular resource allocation to the individual user equipment is persistent, and sends resource allocations to a plurality of user equipments that includes the particular resource allocation to the individual user equipment. The indication can be implicit in the position of the particular resource allocation within the plurality of resource allocations as arranged during the connection setup, or it may be explicit with the resource allocation such as from a bit stolen from the CRC field. The persistent allocation can be terminated in multiple ways, including overwriting with a new persistent allocation, sending an end bit or no data, or sending an improper CRC field which is arranged by an absence of both a NACK from the UE and a re-transmission from the network as a terminating condition.