Described is centralized scheduling of baseband unit resources of a hub, including allocating and deallocating baseband unit resources of a distributed unit instance based on anticipated and/or actual demand for the resources. For example, when user equipment transitions to a connected state, a corresponding message can be detected and used to determine whether sufficient baseband unit resources exist to handle the traffic of the newly connecting user equipment. If not, additional baseband unit resources are allocated, coupled to a node (cell), and the node scheduled to handle the user equipment traffic. When user equipment transitions to an inactive state, the corresponding command can be detected and used to determine whether the baseband unit resources are still needed for other traffic. If not, the baseband unit resources are deallocated.