According to embodiment of the present invention, there is provided a radio base station (20) and a corresponding method for estimating the quality of the uplink control channel. The method comprises measuring (32, 42) a quality parameter of the uplink data channel, and using (38, 50) this to estimate the quality of the uplink control channel. In one embodiment, measurements of the uplink control channel are taken and their reliability determined. If the reliability is low (i.e. below a threshold, or below the respective measurements taken on the uplink data channel), then measurements on the data channel are used instead of those made on the control channel to estimate the control channel quality.