Radio k-coloring is a variation of Hale's channel assignment problem, in which one seeks to assign positive integers to the vertices of a graph G, subject to certain constraints involving the distance between the vertices. Specifically, for any simple connected graph G with diameter d and apositive integer k, 1≤k≤d, a radio k-coloring of G is an assignment f of positive integers to the vertices of G such that ∣f(u)−f(v)∣≥1+k−d(u,v), where u and v are any two distinct vertices of G and d(u,v) is the distance between u and v.In this paper we give a lower bound for the radio k-chromatic number of an arbitrarygraph in terms of k, the total number of vertices n and apositive integer M such that d(u,v)+d(v,w)+d(u,w)≤M for all u,v,w∈V(G). If M is the triameter we get a better lower bound. We also find the triameter M for several graphs, and show that the lower bound obtained for these graphs is sharp for the case k=d