Abstract: A pager arranged for operation in a cellular radio system provides economy to subscribers and technological flexibility to a system operator. Paging service is available in any geographical area covered by the advanced mobile phone service system. Subscribers are thereby able to travel at will while continuing to receive page signals in the cellular system. A special set of geographically dispersed channels in the advanced mobile phone service system are dedicated nation-wide to signaling and call control functions. These channels are used by the pager to properly configure itself to receive a page signal. The pager scans these channels, tunes to the channel with the best received signal strength and synchronizes with a received data stream on this or a second best channel. The pager then awaits receipt of the page signal. The pager also automatically rescans the special channels periodically to insure that it is always tuned to the channel with the best received signal strength.