This paper proposes a scheme of optimal resource management for reverse-link transmissions in multimedia wideband code-division multiple-access (WCDMA) communications. It is to guarantee quality-of-service (QoS) by resource (transmit power and rate) allocation and to achieve high spectral efficiency by base-station assignment. This approach takes the form of a nonlinearprogramming large-scale optimization problem: maximizing an abstraction for the profit of a service provider subject to QoS satisfaction. Solutions for both single-cell and multicell systems are investigated. The single-cell solution has the advantage of low complexity and global convergence in comparison with the previous work. Maximum achievable throughput (capacity) of a single cell is mathematically evaluated and used as the benchmark for performance measure of multicell systems. For multicell systems, due to its max-max structure, solving the optimization problem directly entails a high-computational complexity. Instead, the problem is reformulated to a mixed integer nonlinear-programming (MINLP) problem. Then, binary variables indicating base-station assignments are relaxed to their continuous analogs to make a computer solution feasible. Furthermore, approximations can be made to make the resource-management scheme less computationally complex and allow its partial decentralization. The sensitivity of the proposed scheme to path-gain estimation error is studied. Simulation results are presented to demonstrate the performance of the proposed scheme and the throughput improvement achieved by combining resource allocation with base station assignment.Index Terms-Wideband code-division multiple access (WCDMA), resource management, quality of service (QoS), base station assignment, multimedia services.