A subscriber access unit includes a transceiver for providing wireless communication of digital signals. The digital signals are communicated to a base station using at least one radio frequency (RF) channel via Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) modulated radio signals. Subchannels are made available by the base station within each CDMA RF channel. A bandwidth manager is connected to the transceiver, and is allocated available subchannels by the base station on an as-needed basis, with a number of allocated subchannels changing during a given session. The transceiver, when powered on but not actively sending data, provides an idling mode connection on a reverse link to the base station. The idling mode connection enables subchannels to be reallocated without reestablishing a bit synchronization with the base station.