A wireless communication system, method and apparatus are provided for soft and softer handover of a mobile wireless transmit/receive unit (WTRU) between two or more base stations and/or base station sectors. A network control unit assigns selected base stations to transmit communication data to the WTRU based on the WTRU being disposed in base station or base station sector geographic range of service. A joint detector (JD) receiver is configured to receive and process one or more wireless data signals in each of a series of timeframes where each signal received within a common timeslot has a unique channel encoding of the same communication data. The JD receiver has a plurality of channel estimators that estimate received signals within a common timeslot and a combiner configured to decode and combine the channel estimates to derive a resultant data signal.