 message for one or a group of idle mobile stations is known to the idle terminals and the paging base stations. The BS should not transmit any downlink traffic or paging advertisement to the MS during a Paging Unavailable interval. During a Paging Unavailable interval, the MS may power-down, scan neighbor base stations, reselect a preferred cell, conduct ranging, or perform other activities during which the MS will not be available to any BS for downlink traffic. The MS calculates the start of the paging listening interval based on the paging cycle and paging offset. At the beginning of paging listening interval, the MS scans and synchronizes with the synchronization sequences periodically transmitted by its preferred BS. The MS detects and decodes the superframe headers and confirms whether it is located in the same paging group as it has most recently been by acquiring the PGID parameter. In the Paging Available Mode, the MS monitors the superframe headers. If superframe headers indicate a change in system information (e.g., a change in system configuration count) then the MS should acquire the latest system information at the predetermined time when the system information is broadcast by the BS. The MS decodes the paging message at the predetermined location. If the MS decodes a paging message that contains its identification, the MS performs network re-entry or location update depending on the notification in the paging message. Otherwise, the MS returns to Paging Unavailable Mode. The MS calculates the beginning of the paging listening interval based on the paging cycle and paging offset. The paging listening interval includes the superframe whose superframe number satisfies Nsuperframe modPAGING_CY = PAGING_OFFSET The length of the paging listening interval is one superframe per paging cycle. At the beginning of the paging listening interval, the MS scans and synchronizes with the downlink synchronization channels of its preferred BS and decodes the primary superframe header of the BS. As shown in Figure 4