A two stage compression sub-system for clear channel data. The front stage of the compressing sub-system is an octet based repeat compressor (for example a flag compressor). The second stage is dictionary based compressor (for example Lempel-Ziv (LZ) or Huffmann). Data is compressed using several different techniques, and the technique that provides the best compression is used for each particular packet. For example, each packet can be: a) compress through both compression stages. b) compress through front stage flag compressor only c) compress through back stage dictionary compressor only d) not compressed through either stage (for highly incompressible data) After compression, each packet is provided with a header which specifies the exact method used to compress that packet. At the decoder, the packet header is interrogated to determine how the packet should be de-compressed and the appropriate de-compression is then used.