Methods and devices for dynamically controlling a transmission power of an HS-DPCCH are disclosed. A wireless user equipment receives downlink transmissions on a data channel from a serving cell, and determines a rate of duplicate packets on the data channel. The UE interprets a high rate of duplicate transmissions as an indication that the HS-DPCCH is not being successfully decoded, and therefore increases the transmission power of the HS-DPCCH. Correspondingly, the UE interprets a low rate of duplicate transmissions as an indication that the HS-DPCCH may have too high a transmission power, and therefore decreases the transmission power of the HS-DPCCH.