This paper presents innovative techniques that enable Cognitive Radios (CRs) to become more practical for use in consumer products. Due to inherent delays in an opportunistic network, interruptions might render CR unusable in low latency consumer applications (i.e. voice). In this paper, we present four techniques and results that help reduce delays and improve performance of a CR. specifically, we propose techniques that reduce error rate probability and delays while co-existing in a competitive environment.