A method and apparatus provide advantageous uplink power control for a set of uplink channels transmitted by a mobile terminal or other item of user equipment (UE). The proposed uplink power control maintains the total received power for the set of uplink channels at or about a target received power, while also maintaining the received signal quality for a subset of those channels---e.g, a particular one of them---at or about a target received signal qualify. In an advantageous but non-limiting example embodiment, the subset comprises a fixed-rate control channel, and the set includes that control channel and a variable-rate traffic channel Correspondingly, a base station generates first power control commands to maintain the received signal quality of the control channel at or about some quality target, and generates second power control commands to maintain the total received power (of the two channels) at or about some power target.