Methods, systems, and devices for wireless communication are described. The described techniques provide for transmission of uplink data from a user equipment (UE) in the absence of scheduled uplink resources for the uplink data transmission that are allocated to the UE prior to the transmission of the uplink data. Various examples provide uplink configurations that may be used for unscheduled uplink transmissions of a UE, which may be selected dynamically or semi-statically. Unscheduled uplink transmissions may be transmitted in shared radio frequency spectrum according to one or more frame structures, and access to the shared radio frequency spectrum may be determined based on a priority of an operator associated with a UE for accessing the spectrum. Beamforming techniques may be used for transmissions and beam widths may be selected based on the information in a transmission, an operator priority for use of shared radio frequency spectrum, or any combination thereof.