A cellular communication system supports both soft handover communication channels and non-soft handover communication channels from the same user equipment (101). A serving base station (103) comprises a receive front end (201) for receiving transmissions from the user equipment (101). A first indication processor (203) receives a first link quality indication associated with a first signal of a soft handover communication channel from the user equipment (101). A second indication processor 205 receives a second link quality indication associated with a second signal of a non-soft handover channel from the user equipment (101). A characteristic processor (207) then determines the radio link characteristic in response to the first and second link quality indications. For example a power control command for a soft handover signal and a channel quality indicator for a non-soft handover signal may be compared and a radio link quality may be determined in response to the comparison.