In 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 the relay stations is associated with at least one of the base stations, each of the mobile stations is associated with at least one of the base stations or one of the relay stations, wireless data transmissions between mobile stations and base stations take place either as single-hop data transmissions between the mobile stations and their associated base stations, or as multi-hop data transmissions between the mobile stations and their associated relay stations and a data transmission between the relay stations and base stations associated with the relay stations, and wherein an average number of multi-hop data transmissions in the radio communications system equals at least an average number of single-hop data transmissions.