A Single Carrier Block Transmission (SCBT) system employs an inherently parallel approach to error correction processing. At the transmission system (200), an incoming data stream is split (210) into P parallel data streams, each having a data rate equal to a fraction of the incoming data stream's data rate. The parallel data streams are then each separately encoded (220) in P parallel encoding processes (beneficially, using P parallel encoders (222)). The P separately encoded data streams are then merged (330), interleaved (320), and mapped (310) into a single stream of encoded symbols, which are transmitted to the receiver using an arbitrary modulation (240) and transmission scheme. At the receiver (255), the received data stream is de-interleaved (350) and split into P encoded data streams, which are then decoded (285) using P parallel decoders. Then, the decoded data streams are combined or multiplexed (295) into a single data stream.