A method for improving the transmission efficiency of a short data burst (SDB) in a CDMA telecommunications network by generating an SDB comprising a service reference identifier, a service option omit field indicating whether a service option identifier is to be included or omitted from the SDB, and a data block. The SDB may thus be generated without a service option identifier and, as such, be more efficiently transmitted between a base station and a mobile station, thereby resulting in a typical gain over the prior art of up to 2% of data capacity.