An apparatus and method for transmitting and receiving data in a communication system are provided. A serving node includes a transceiver/receiver including an antenna for transmitting and receiving data from at least one of plurality of customer equipments; a control processor responsive to an requesting handover message indicating handover to a target node for transmitting to the target node a sequence number message wherein the sequence number message has successfully received by the customer equipment; a memory for storing data to be transmitted to the customer equipment.