For enhancing user throughput and coverage within a multi-cell radio system a method for operating a multi-cell radio system, especially an OFDMA-based radio system including a plurality of base stations, wherein different frequency reuse factors are used within different reuse zones of one cell by a fractional frequency reuse (FFR) scheme, the method includes the following steps: allocating a size or resource to the different reuse zones, and allocating users into different reuse zones. Further, a multi-cell radio system is described, preferably for carrying out the above mentioned method.