A system comprising: a plurality of base stations forming a multicast broadcast single frequency network operating using unlicensed frequency resources; and a network element configured to allocate a transmission period to each of the plurality of base stations, wherein each base station is configured to independently determine whether the unlicensed frequency resources are available for transmission, and transmit a data packet using the unlicensed frequency resources during the allocated transmission period only if the unlicensed frequency resources are determined to be available.