One aspect of the teachings herein involves the temporary transfer of radio identities from one service area of a wireless communication network to another service area, where the individual radio identities are used to differentiate individual radio connections between the network and respective wireless nodes supported by the network. In particular, the temporary transfer of a given radio identity from its default service area for use in another service is limited temporally and/or geographically. Limiting the temporal and/or geographic scope of the radio identity transfer allows the network to substantially maintain default associations of radio identities and their respective service areas, which allows the network to prevent or reduce the use of conflicting radio identities in the same service area. Transfer signaling may be used transfer radio identities, and such signaling may include the temporal and/or geographic restrictions, to control the migration or spread of borrowed identities in the network.