We are concerned with a CDMA cellular system with unbalanced traffic environment such that a cell with high traffic should be assigned a frequency additional to the common one shared with its neighboring cells. To remove quality-dropping inter-cell hard handoffs, the cell with high traffic was first partitioned into three regions. Then, the common frequency is assigned in the outermost region, and the additional frequency is operated in the innermost region, whereas both the common frequency and the additional frequency are operated in the middle region. This frequency assignment strategy is shown not only to remove inter-cell hard handoffs without requiring extra hardware, but also to reduce intra-cell hard handoffs.