A system and method for configuring a variable Channel Quality Information (CQI) reporting period based on a User Equipment's (UE) Doppler frequency or speed. Mobile users are divided into three Doppler frequency regions based on their speed—for example, low, medium, and high Doppler users—and are assigned the CQI, reporting periods accordingly by the base station. The users in the low and high Doppler regions (i.e., UEs with low and high speeds) receive a high value for the CQI reporting period, whereas—the users in the medium Doppler region (i.e., UEs with medium speeds) receive a low value for the CQI reporting period. The UE speed-specific CQI reporting period improves the uplink capacity by adaptively controlling a UE's CQI-related uplink transmissions, without compromising on the downlink capacity/throughput.