Abstract: A novel and improved method and apparatus, in a WCDMA communication system (100), for informing a mobile station (101) of a downlink data frame time offset by determining the downlink data frame time offset, and transmitting the downlink data frame time offset via an Active Set Update message transmitted from a cell (102 or 103) to mobile station (101). Once an Active Set Update message is received, the data frame time offset information is provided to a timing block (201) which may determine data frame boundary of each downlink signal. Timing block (201) may then adjust the PN sequence timing corresponding to the downlink signal associated with the data frame time offset such that corresponding data symbols in each data frame are correctly soft combined in a combiner (210).