Techniques to increase the capacity of a W-CDMA wireless communications system. In an exemplary embodiment, early termination (400) of one or more transport channels on a W-CDMA wireless communications link is provided. In particular, early decoding (421, 423) is performed on slots as they are received over the air, and techniques are described for signaling (431, 432) acknowledgment messages (ACK's) for one or more transport channels correctly decoded to terminate the transmission of those transport channels. The techniques may be applied to the transmission of voice signals using the adaptive multi-rate (AMR) codec. Further exemplary embodiments describe aspects to reduce the transmission power and rate of power control commands sent over the air, as well as aspects for applying tail-biting convolutional codes (1015) in the system.