A method, apparatus and system for accurately identifying discontinuous transmissions (DTX) and enabling the utilization of a dedicated control channel (DCCH) by determining if the frame satisfies a quality check, analyzing at least a portion of bits within the frame if the frame does not satisfy the quality check, determining if the bits analyzed exceed a threshold and identifying the frame as a DTX if the bits fail to exceed the threshold. Some embodiments further count a number of zero bits in a tail end of the frame, determine if the number of zero values exceed the threshold, determine if the frame includes an expected sequence of bits if the number of the zero bits does not exceed the threshold, and identify the frame as the DTX if the frame does not include the expected sequence.