A visit to an overhead channel to obtain base station identifiers is made if it is necessary to do so. Base station identifiers are indicative of an approximate location of a terminal. The determination to update the base station identifiers may be made by monitoring one or more base stations in the terminal's active set. In another aspect, the terminal can originate a new data call immediately after the necessary base station identifiers have been obtained from the overhead channel, without having to wait for the expiration of a timer (e.g., the dormant timer). Moreover, by maintaining the data session when terminating the data call for the overhead visit, data communication may be more quickly resumed, for a new data call originated after the overhead visit, using the same configured protocols.