A method of connection setup in mobile wireless data communications systems is disclosed where the connection setup time is decreased for delay-sensitive communications sessions relative to the normal connection setup time for confidence-dependent communications sessions. This is achieved by performing some of the connection set-up steps for delay-sensitive communications sessions after successfully demodulating a smaller number of indications identifying an access terminal's desired serving resource than would be demodulated in the case of a confidence-dependent communication session prior to performing the same connection set-up steps.