A method and apparatus for transmitting an input data signal over an information channel. The input data signal comprises a sequence of data blocks. A puncture coded signal is generated for each data block in the sequence of data blocks. The total number of bits in the puncture coded signal is equal to the number of bits in a particular data block plus additional error correcting bits used to perform error correction at a receiver. The number of error correcting bits is adaptively adjusted for each data block in response to a channel quality measure for the information channel.