This invention relates to a cellular wide-area radio communications system, comprising a plurality of base stations; a plurality of relay stations; and a plurality of mobile stations; wherein each of said relay stations is associated with at least one of said base stations, wherein each of said mobile stations is associated at least with one of said base stations or one of said relay stations, wherein wireless data transmissions between mobile stations and base stations take place either as single-hop data transmissions between said mobile stations and their associated base stations, or as multi­ hop data transmissions that comprise a data transmission between said mobile stations and their associated relay stations and a data transmission between said relay stations and base stations associated with said relay stations, and wherein an average number of multi-hop data transmissions in said radio communications system is equal to or larger than an average number of single-hop data transmissions.