AbstractIn this, the second part of a two‐part paper, the required time for establishing a mobile packet radio network using the virtual circuit and time division multiple access protocol developed in Part 1 is analysed. Tools are developed to determine the virtual circuit and network set‐up times in terms of the channel bandwidth allocated to establish and maintain the network. The tools are then extended to include the effects of user mobility. Then these results are combined with the network capacity results of Part 1 to analyse the trade‐off between the data rate and set‐up time of the network. Next a hierarchical architecture is proposed and the network data rate versus set‐up time trade‐off of this architecture is analysed using these tools. This architecture is shown to both provide a higher data rate and establish faster than flat networks of the same numb