A novel and useful apparatus for and method of determining the channel order and channel estimate in a communications system. The present invention is suitable for use with a wide range of channels and is particularly useful in estimating wireless channels such as GSM and other types of cellular channels. A channel estimate is performed on the entire received training sequence. Those taps having an energy larger than the energy of a channel estimation error quantity are selected for the final channel estimation model. The estimation error is calculated by dividing the complete received training sequence into two different portions, wherein both portions are of equal size. A channel estimate is used to calculate the channel estimate of both portions which are then used to calculate the channel estimation error quantity.