Communication method and apparatus

In a spectrum allocation method in a cellular communication system, a cell pattern is divided into clusters each containing a plurality of adjacent cells. A pool of forward and return link bearers is allocated to each cluster and may be shared among cells within the cluster. Bearers are reused between blusters having a sufficiently high mutual isolation. Preferably, the same time slot in a return link bearer is allocated to multiple users within the cluster. The receiver of the shared return link bearer uses multi-user detection techniques to separately decode the signals from each user sharing a time slot, using the spatial diversity of the individual cells.