A method and system to control selection of a serving cell for a UE. An example method includes determining respectively for each candidate cell of multiple candidate cells a maximum backhaul bit rate of the candidate cell, determining that a given one of the candidate cells has a highest determined maximum backhaul bit rate among the candidate cells, and based at least on the determining that the given candidate cell has the highest determined maximum backhaul bit rate among the candidate cells, selecting the given candidate cell to be the serving cell for the UE. Further, the method could also include basing the selection on consideration of a backhaul packet-drop rate of the given cell. In example implementations, the selection of a serving cell could be a selection of a PCell for carrier-aggregation service, an anchor cell for dual-connectivity service, or a secondary cell for dual-connectivity service, among other possibilities.