An LTE baseband receiver and a method for operating the receiver are provided. The receiver comprises a frequency selective interference estimator, an interference level averager and an interference assessor operative to control which output of the frequency selective interference estimator or the interference level averager is to be supplied to a soft-metric calculator. Frequency selectivity of the interference is assessed, and the best mode of interference estimation is selected to increase LTE receiver performance in loaded networks without impacting receiver performance in unloaded networks.