In a radio communications system, the identity of user equipment is provided upon receiving an access node a first message from at least one user equipment of a plurality of user equipment, where the first message includes information relating to the at least one user equipment. An identity for the at least one user equipment is generated by the access node based upon the information received. A second message that includes the identity is transmitted by the access node to the at least one user equipment, where a payload size for the identity is constant.