The present invention provides a method and an apparatus for controlling a wireless transmission in a handoff zone. The method includes receiving a schedule grant selectively from a first base station sector of a multiplicity of base station sectors in an active set of a mobile station and receiving a rate control command concurrently at the mobile station from a second base station sector of the active set that did not provide said schedule grant to determine at least one of a rate level and a power level based on a precedence given to the schedule grant over the rate control command. Using a combining rule depending upon a particular case, the mobile station may resolve a rate or a power level for a protocol in a digital cellular network of a mobile communication system. For a first case, a first combining rule combines one or more rate control commands with one or more schedule grants for a common rate control protocol, adding a grant precedence parameter, i.e., a schedule grant from a non-serving base station sector has precedence over rate control commands from the sectors that did not send schedule grants in the active set of a mobile station. For a second case, a second combining rule combines more than one rate control commands with more than one schedule grants for a dedicated rate control protocol by selectively setting a parameter at a value for a protocol, a rate control command from a non-serving base station sector overrides a schedule grant from a serving base station sector. This may allow the non-serving base station sectors to control a level of load from multiple users.