A communications system has a cellular structure including a base station that is located within a cell of the cellular structure and provides an elevation beamforming transmission based on a set of elevation precoding matrix indicator offsets in an elevation codebook. The communications system also includes user equipment that is located within the cell and coupled to the base station to receive the set of elevation precoding matrix indicator offsets and a set of reference signals to provide channel quality and inter-cell interference measurements, wherein a selected channel quality indicator is based on an increase in channel quality with respect to inter-cell interference at the user equipment and corresponds to one of the set of elevation precoding matrix indicator offsets. A method of operating a communications system having a cellular structure is also provided.