A method for temperature compensation of a time basis, driven by a quartz crystal oscillator, comprises a second oscillator having a linear frequency dependency on temperature. The method counts the pulses (65) of the quartz crystal oscillator for at least three different temperatures during time intervals (62, 63..) given by a predetermined number of pulses (61) of the second oscillator. Then the function of variation of the second oscillator period with temperature is calculated based on said three pulse count values. Then said calculated function is used to correct the frequency change of the quartz crystal oscillator due to temperature changes at any operating temperature. Therefore the temperature correction can be provided independently from any offset considerations and is not dependent on the choice of the three different temperatures.