Method and apparatus for registering a radio telephone subscriber unit wherein the subscriber unit remains tuned to the registering channel after successful registration

Disclosed is a method for operating a radio telephone subscriber unit or mobile station (10) to register with a cellular system. The method includes the steps of determining from registration-related information (REGID) that is received from the cellular system that the subscriber unit must register with the cellular system; selecting a channel on which to send a registration message to the cellular system; transmitting the registration message to the cellular system on the selected channel; determining that the registration message was accepted by the cellular system; and, for a case where cellular system paging channels are in a same set of control channels as cellular system access channels, remaining tuned to the selected channel until a receipt of next registration-related information from the cellular system. For the case where the registration-related information includes a value of REGID, the method may include a further step of modifying a value of NXTREG with the received REGID and a value of REGINCR.