A transmitter, receiver and method for mitigating the cliff effect for content delivery over a heterogeneous network. In one embodiment, the transmitter includes: (1) a joint encoder configured to receive a content unit and generate multiple quantized representations thereof and (2) an erasing quantizer associated with the joint encoder and configured to select, from uncoded symbols representing the content unit, multiple subsets of the uncoded symbols. The multiple quantized representations and the multiple subsets of the uncoded symbols are associated to form multiple, independently quantized, correlated descriptions of the content unit. Two design parameters may be employed to control the level of correlation. In one embodiment, the receiver includes: (1) a joint decoder configured to decode quantized representations extracted from received descriptions representing a content unit and (2) a summing junction associated with the joint decoder and configured to employ at least one uncoded symbol representing the content unit to compensate for at least one corresponding symbol that the joint decoder failed to decode.