Outer loop power control for a traffic channel includes using at least one output from another channel to determine an appropriate control threshold such as a signal-to-noise ratio when selected channel conditions exist. One example traffic channel condition comprises having insufficient data transmission to provide a direct measurement of packet error rate. Another example traffic channel condition used to determine when to use the other channel output is a transmission mode on the traffic channel. An example output used for setting the control threshold is a chip energy to noise ratio of a pilot channel associated with the traffic channel.