A system for scheduling wireless data transmissions divides a band allocated to the mobile service carrier into two overlapping bands. Then each user equipment (UE) of a plurality of UEs that connects to the ground-based network of the mobile service carrier is assigned to one of the two overlapping bands. The system allocates at a given scheduling time, physical resource blocks (PRBs) to UEs up to a maximum number of PRBs available for the particular overlapping frequency band to which the UE is assigned based on a metric for the UE that is a ratio of a downlink channel quality indicator for the UE to the average data rate of the UE at the given time, giving higher priority for PRB allocation to UEs that have a larger metric than other UEs of the plurality of UEs.