An improved turbo code based incremental redundancy includes a first step of puncturing a data stream for a first transmission to provide a set of first unpunctured trellis sections. A next step includes puncturing a data stream for a second transmission to provide a set of second unpunctured trellis sections. A next step includes incremental redundancy combining the first and second transmissions of the trellises to provide non-adjacent first and second unpunctured trellis sections. The above arrangement results in a uniform distribution of punctured and unpunctured bits to provide lower errors.