Polling to determine which user devices wish to transmit, is a time-consuming and resource-intensive process in 5G and 6G. Procedures disclosed herein can provide a fast, extremely compact sequence whereby the base station can determine which users are ready to transmit. First, the base station divides the users into a number of sections, and assigns each user a position in its section. Then, in a “section poll”, the user devices indicate which sections include at least one ready user, and the base station broadcasts a terse listing of these section numbers. Then, in a subsequent “user poll”, the ready users specifically identify themselves, with another compact format. For example, the section poll may use just a single resource element per section, and the user poll may include only those sections that have at least one ready user. These resource-efficient protocols can thereby save energy and time while minimizing background generation.