A user equipment (UE) and source base station may use data compression techniques for data packets sent between them. During a handover, the source base station may provide data compression context to a target base station, thus enabling the target base station to continue the data compression following the handover without having to reestablish the data compression context. The source base station may determine data compression capabilities of the UE or the target base station, or both, and may communicate the determined data compression capabilities to the UE or target base station. The source base station may identify at least one gap in a sequence of packets received from the UE, and communicate the existence of the gap to the target base station, which may request retransmission of packets associated with the gap.