Forward power control during a soft handoff in a wireless communication system is accomplished by tracking each power command (PC) transmitted from a mobile unit to two or more base station transceiver systems (BTSs). Each BTS may interpret power commands differently due to noise. However, the power commands are relayed to a selector along with additional data transmitted in a conventional fashion. The selector determines the power levels of each BTS and transmits power charge commands to maintain power balance between the BTSs. The BTSs may transmit each PC command to the selector or accumulate several PC commands and send a PC history to the selector. The selector generates a reference PC history, which may be one of the PC histories transmitted from a BTS, a combination thereof, the result of data processing on the one or more PC histories. Individual power change commands or the reference PC history is transmitted back to the BTS to adjust the transmitter output level of each BTS so that the BTSs are transmitting at compatible signal levels.