Abstract: In an idle state transition from a macro mobile network to a femtocell, a mobile station looks for the femtocell to operate in a frequency band typically assigned to a macro network. For normal macro network operations, mobile stations look for base stations operating on various channels, e.g. based on hashing of respective mobile station identifiers. Femtocells generate a pilot beacon on a carrier frequency to enable mobile station acquisition, e.g. to redirect a mobile station to the operating frequency of the femtocell. To avoid the need to continually cycle or hop through all possible macro assigned carrier frequencies, pilot beacon transmissions of a particular femtocell are prioritized to correspond to the mobile station(s) expected to utilize that femtocell, e.g. by using existing network information, provisioning device information or self learning/calculating information regarding the carrier most likely to be used by any particular mobile station expected to use the femtocell.