A method controls a time-based transmission of signals of a subscriber terminal for synchronous reception at a base station of a radio communication system. Upon detection that a determined time offset of received signals is equal to or greater than a predetermined threshold value, a change from one-step control commands to multi-step control commands for controlling the time-based transmission of the subscriber terminal is performed by the base station, or a synchronization procedure is initiated by means of a randomly chosen access channel by the subscriber terminal.