Methods and apparatus in a fifth-generation wireless communications, including an example method, in a wireless device, that includes receiving a downlink signal comprising an uplink access configuration index, using the uplink access configuration index to identify an uplink access configuration from among a predetermined plurality of uplink access configurations, and transmitting to the wireless communications network according to the identified uplink access configuration. The example method further includes, in the same wireless device, receiving, in a first downlink subframe, a first Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiplexing (OFDM) transmission formatted according to a first numerology and receiving, in a second downlink subframe, a second OFDM transmission formatted according to a second numerology, the second numerology differing from the first numerology, where the first numerology has a first subcarrier spacing and the second numerology has a second subcarrier spacing, the first subcarrier spacing differing from the second subcarrier spacing. Variants of this method, corresponding apparatuses, and corresponding network-side methods and apparatuses are also disclosed.