A communications system includes a base station and a plurality of remote stations wirelessly communicating with the base station and transmitting a requested service rate to the base station. The base station allocates a next transmission of data to the remote stations based on a scheduling operation. The scheduling operation includes determining an average service rate for each remote station and determining a priority value for each remote station based on the requested service rate and average service rate. In allocating the next transmission of data, at least one of the average service rate and the priority value is modified to thereby control data throughput of the communications system.