A communication procedure suitable for a cordless telephone system involves time division duplex radio communication between a handset 11 and a base station 3 using alternating bursts of transmission over a single radio channel. Once a radio link has been set up, initial transmissions carry a synchronisation logical channel S and a signalling logical channel D multiplexed together, but the link may switch to bursts carrying a communications logical channel B for the speech data and the signalling logical channel D. Burst synchronisation is achieved by the asynchronous detection of words in a synchronisation channel S. These words have bit patterns reducing the probability of incorrect asynchronous detection of them. If one part ceases to receive handset signals from the other, it transmits a special signal, informing the other part. This enables both parts to detect the failure of a link at substantially the same time, so that their actions to re-establish the link are synchronised.