| CPC H04W 74/0841 (2013.01) [H04L 1/1812 (2013.01); H04L 5/0053 (2013.01); H04W 80/02 (2013.01)] | 18 Claims |

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1. A method in a base station for granting access to a plurality of user devices to a communication channel, the method comprising:
receiving, by the base station, at least a first request to access the communication channel from a first user device and a second request to access the communication channel from a second user device, the first request including a first random access preamble and a first data payload and the second request including a second random access preamble and a second data payload; and
transmitting, by the base station to the at least first and second user devices, a response message including at least (i) a network identifier computed based on at least an orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) symbol of the first request and an uplink (UL) carrier used for the first request, (ii) a first fallback random access response (RAR) for the first user device indicating to the first user device to fall back from a two-step random access channel (RACH) procedure to a four-step RACH procedure, (iii) a first channel resource assignment configuring a first channel resource for the first user device to transmit the first data payload, (iv) a second fallback RAR for the second user device indicating to the second user device to fall back from the two-step RACH procedure to the four-step RACH procedure, and (v) a second channel resource assignment configuring a second channel resource for the second user device to transmit the second data payload, the at least first and second channel resource assignments included in different portions of the response message.
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