A portable communication equipment comprises a radio communication sections (13), (14) for transmitting and receiving a CDMA signal, a base band modem section (16) for modulating a speech signal into a CDMA signal and demodulating a CDMA signal into a speech signal, and a CPU (17) for controlling the transmission and reception of a CDMA signal. When the equipment fails in capturing a selected channel and falls in a condition when a system was lost, the CPU (17) retries to capture the selected channel. The CPU (17), when it fails in capturing the selected channel, selects another channel only when it tries to capture the selected channel for a predetermined number of times as well as it does not obtain an overhead message. With this arrangement, it is possible to capture an appropriate channel if an unsuitable channel is selected and the portable communication equipment falls into a condition when a system was lost.