A method for reducing a likelihood of paging all base stations in the tracking area is disclosed, comprising: tracking a per-cell paging success rate for cells in the radio access network and a last known cell for mobile devices attached in the radio access network; performing, based on a paging request message, a paging sequence to identify a paging set of base stations to page the specific mobile device, the paging sequence further comprising: identifying a paging set that is a last known cell for the specific mobile device based on the tracked last known cell, sending paging messages to the radio access network to all cells in the paging set, identifying a next paging set based on the tracked per-cell paging success rate, and sending paging messages to the radio access network to all cells in the next paging set.