A data transmission method, a base station, and a user equipment. The data transmission method includes determining, by a base station, a modulation and coding scheme level and the number of physical resource block pairs, selecting one transport block size (TBS) table from a first TBS table and a second TBS table, and determining a corresponding TBS, so that a coding rate can be increased when the base station transmits service data to the UE according to a TBS in the selected second TBS table.