Methods, apparatuses, and computer program products where a user equipment in a wireless communications network determines a measure of signal quality for a restricted set of beam recovery candidates, compares the measure of signal quality of contention free random access candidates reference signal in the restricted set or a subset of contention free random access candidates to a signal quality based recovery threshold, and selects the at least one candidate signal with signal quality above that threshold from a candidate beam reference signal list; where the user equipment measures a reference signal received power for contention free random access candidate beam, selects candidates above a reference signal received power threshold, determines signal quality for the selected contention free random access candidates above that threshold, and selects one candidate in response to multiple contention free random access candidates being above that threshold or the one with highest measure of signal quality.