A method for controlling inter-cell interference in a wireless communication system includes receiving information about an interference control period from a central controller, performing carrier sensing based activation competition in the interference control period, and scheduling user equipments served by the BS if the BS wins the carrier sensing based activation competition. The carrier sensing based activation competition may be based on a BS-specific back-off value related to a BS-specific weight. The BS-specific weight may be determined as the sum of products of an instantaneous throughput and a differential value of an average throughput based utility function, for all UEs served by the BS.