A method is disclosed for operating a cellular telephone that includes a first step, executed in response to input from a user, of disabling the cellular telephone from receiving cellular telephone calls. A second step then periodically enables the cellular telephone to receive, store and display user-related messages from a network control channel. In one embodiment the step of disabling includes a step of de-registering the cellular telephone from the network, and the step of periodically enabling includes an initial step of re-registering the cellular telephone with the network. The step of disabling may include a step of reducing the power consumption of the cellular telephone. In accordance with a further aspect of this invention the step of periodically enabling includes an initial step of requesting the network to assign the cellular telephone to a predetermined paging frame class that insures that the cellular telephone will receive a paging message from the network every n seconds. The step of periodically enabling thus further includes the step of placing the cellular telephone in a low power mode of operation for n-x seconds, where x is a period of time at least equal to a time required to resynchronize the cellular telephone to the network control channel.