A base station servicing a cell of a cellular network provides power control of a cell independent of any other cell in the network. For downlink power control, the base station transmits information at its full power and applies a downlink power control factor to each downlink channel to equalize downlink throughputs of the mobile terminals in the cell. For uplink power control, the base station transmits instructions to have the uplink channel with the worst channel condition to transmit at its full power and the other uplink channels to transmit at that same full power. Each transmission is scaled by a corresponding uplink power control factor such that uplink throughputs for the mobile terminals in the cell are equalized. The base station applies an approximation of a rigorous capacity lower bound algorithm using propagation channel conditions and channel parameters to calculate the uplink and downlink power control factors.