Patent ID: 8364175

Claim:
A method comprising: at a radio access network, determining that a mobile station should be paged; before sending the page, the RAN determining whether or not both: (i) less than a predetermined period of time has elapsed since a last call of the mobile station ended, wherein the last call ended in a sector within a first paging zone, and (ii) paging-channel occupancy is above a threshold level in at least one sector in the first paging zone other than the sector in which the last call ended; if it is determined that both: (i) less than the predetermined period of time has elapsed since the last call of the mobile station ended and (ii) the paging-channel occupancy is above the threshold level in at least one other sector in the first paging zone, then the RAN making a rapid page attempt in the sector of the radio access network in which the last call ended; and otherwise, the RAN using a zone-based paging scheme to page the mobile station.