Abstract: A communication system (100) that includes base stations (103-109) comprising selection circuitry (207) is provided herein. The determination of a call anchoring base station (base station performing Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) frame selection) is made based on the base station with a lowest mean work load. During communication with a remote unit (113), frames received by non-call anchoring base stations (105, 107) are backhauled to a switch (101). The switch (101) then sidehauls the frames to the call anchoring base station (103), where selection and call processing functions for the particular call takes place.

Abstract: Power control in a spread-spectrum communication system takes place by determining origination power of a traffic channel based on a number of active demodulators and pilot channel signal quality (610). Once origination transmit power is determined and call origination takes place, the transmit power is reduced at a first rate when a time is less than a time for all active demodulators to be established (615), otherwise the transmit power is reduced at a second rate (621). After all active demodulators have been acquired power control takes place by receiving a Power Measurement Report Message (PMRM) or a Pilot Strength Measurement Message (PSMM), determining, a signal quality metric existing at the remote unit based on the PMRM or PSMM, and adjusting transmit power based on the signal quality metric (645).