A mobile station (10) is coupled to an external network (60) or to a media gateway (50). A network resource allocation manager (130) pre-establishes a communication network (100) connection of network nodes (20-50). This plurality of communication nodes is assigned (150) as a complete unit instead of piecemeal sequentially. Based upon communication network node resources and network operator input, a number of the communication nodes or speculative contexts are pre-established (148).