Symbol sampling in a high time delay spread interference environment includes acquiring (602) a time varying baseband waveform. The waveform has a signal amplitude that varies between one of a plurality of symbol states. The waveform is sampled (603) at a rate of m times the symbol rate. During an evaluation time, an error value is calculated (604, 606) for each of m data sample positions. Each of the error values comprises an average distance between the measured value of the waveform as indicated by the data sample and a closest known symbol value. The error values are used to create an error surface. Thereafter, the error surface is modeled as a quadratic and an optimal sample time is determined (608, 610, 612) based on finding the time location where the quadratic surface is minimum. A sinc interpolator is then used to resample the data.