Adaptive trellis coding enabling and disabling in discrete multitone data communications

In a transmitter, first and second sets of discrete multitone (DMT) sub-carrier signals or tones are identified. First and second bit groups of a payload data frame corresponding to the first and second sets of tones are selected. The first bit group is then trellis encoded. The second bit group is not trellis encoded. The first trellis coded tone group and the second bit group are then constellation mapped to produce a DMT symbol for transmission. A receiver may use an estimate of signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of each tone to determine whether to select the tone for inclusion in the first or second set of tones. The receiver may provide the transmitter with information indicating whether a tone is included the first or second set of tones.