A apparatus and method for improved performance in radio telecommunications systems, and in particular multi-carrier code division multiple access (MC-CDMA) networks that employ pulse-shaping filters on the transmit side of a radio link. In order to more accurately transmit a radio signal bearing a symbol sequence, the modulated and spread information stream is upsampled using a technique that involves inserting zeros in the frequency domain. A corresponding downsampling procedure on the receive side permits reconstruction of the transmitted symbols. A new channel estimation algorithm may also be used, and the improved channel estimation advantageously employed to obtain more faithful symbol detection.