FIG. 3 provides a schematic diagram of a second example communications network. The networks of FIG. 1 and FIG. 3 are substantially similar, however, the uplink and downlink of the network of FIG. 3 are decoupled. In FIG. 3 decoupling refers to the different nodes which the user device transmits data to and receives data from, for example the user device transmits data to a relay node but receives data directly from the control node or infrastructure equipment 101 In this example, these communications paths may arise because the relay nodes are uplink only relays and therefore unable to participate in the downlink. A situation as illustrated in FIG. 3 may also arise without the presence of uplink only relays when a base station transmits at a significantly higher power than a user device. In such a scenario, the downlink signal may have sufficient power to reach the user device directly but the user device may only be able to transmit at a power sufficient to reach a nearby relay node which then relays the uplink signal to the base station. The aforementioned definition of decoupling is from the user device's perspective, however, a more general definition may be to define decoupling as when the communications paths of the uplink and down link are different i.e. the relays and/or the infrastructure equipment involved in the uplink and downlink communications paths differ. An advantage of uncoupled communications is that coverage provided by a base station may be increased because a greater number of user devices may be able to connect to a base station even though they cannot directly communicate with the base station.