A wireless communication network (20) utilizes a hard handoff procedure for switching between cells serving a mobile station (40). In a disclosed example, the existing link between the mobile station (40) and a serving base station (38) is not released until a new link between a target base station (32) and a mobile station (40) is established. At the same time, however, the mobile station maintains only one base station or link within its active set at all times. The disclosed example is useful for dedicated channel and shared channel communications in CDMA systems, for example.