Operational and environmental efficiency in virtual radio access networks (VRANs) can be improved by offloading data traffic and/or control signaling between physical transmit points (TPs) of a virtual TP. This may allow one or more physical TPs of the virtual TP to be muted in the downlink or uplink direction, thereby reducing energy consumption. The offloading may be performed during relatively short time-intervals such that physical TP are muted for one or more transmission time intervals (TTIs) before being re-activated. The offloading may also be implemented over longer time-intervals in accordance with a traffic engineering (TE) policy. Further it is possible to re-activate a de-activated downlink transmitter of physical TP by monitoring wireless signals via an activated receiver of the physical TP.