A method is provided in one example embodiment and may include receiving data associated with a user equipment (UE) at a central baseband unit; determining one or more block time scheduling decisions for a plurality of subframes associated with the data; communicating the data to a remote radio unit; communicating the one or more block time scheduling decisions to the remote radio unit; and communicating the data to the UE from the remote radio unit based, at least in part, on the one or more block time scheduling decisions. In some cases, the method can include communicating the one or more block time scheduling decisions to the remote radio unit at a first rate and communicating the data to the remote radio unit at a second rate.