The described technology is generally directed towards dynamically changing which quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) table a user equipment is to use based on channel quality information. A network schedules a user equipment with 256 QAM modulation if the user equipment recommends 256 QAM in the CQI report (and the scheduler decides to use 256 QAM for that particular user equipment). The network indicates to the user equipment that it has to use 256 QAM modulation and coding scheme (MCS) table and not the configured QAM MCS table while determining the scheduling parameters by decoding PDCCH.