A CDMA system according to an embodiment of the invention employs a technique for power optimized user loading that obtains a desired allocation of different radio configuration calls. The technique takes advantage of the relatively low power requirements of RC3 calls for low load conditions, while increasing the number of RC4 calls for high load conditions. As the load increases, the percentage of RC4 calls increases while the percentage of RC3 calls decreases. The technique strives to minimize overall power consumption in the system for all call load conditions, by maximizing the number of RC3 calls at any given time while keeping Walsh code resources available for both new calls and hand-in traffic.