A method for operating a radio communication system for an industrial automation system, which includes at least one base station and a plurality of subscriber stations, wherein at predefined transmission times the base station cyclically polls datagrams to be transmitted by the subscriber stations, where the base station predefines for the subscriber stations the transmission times, within a polling cycle, for transmitting the datagrams to be transmitted, where the transmission times are each determined from a preceding transmission time by adding a polling cycle duration and subtracting a delay time, while the at least one datagram to be transmitted prior to the preceding transmission time is already in the corresponding subscriber station and ready for transmission, and where the subscriber stations transmit information to the base station regarding the corresponding delay time to determine the transmission times.