The present invention provides an improved receiver for data-rate detection in a signal received from a transmitter of a cellular radio communication system including multiple transport channels supporting variable data-rate transmissions. This is accomplished by a computationally efficient technique for data-rate detection. The improved receiver receives data and TFCI associated with each of the multiple transport channels. The receiver then obtains a maximum number of valid transport format combinations and a maximum number of TFCIs that can be formed. The receiver then computes a subset of TFCIs using the obtained maximum number of valid transport format combinations and the maximum number of TFCIs, and decodes from the computed subset of TFCIs within the frame to reduce computation during decoding and to improve data-rate detection reliability.