In a mobile communication system, cell-wide short identifiers are assigned to the mobile transceivers by the base station transceiver to reduce the overhead of long addresses (e.g., globally unique). The base station obtains information about a number of mobile terminals and determines the appropriate bit-length of the identifiers of the terminals. If new terminals join the cell and there are no more identifiers available, the base station increases the bit-length and notifies (e.g., through a broadcast message) the terminals about the change. Similarly, when terminals leave the cell, the base station may decide to reduce the length of the identifiers. The updates can be performed respectively by prepending a pre-defined digit or removing a digit. As digit removal may lead to collisions (i.e. same identifier for multiple terminals), the base station should individually provide replacement identifiers to affected terminals.