A mobile station in a control hold mode wakes up at a time slot on a wake-up channel received from a base station, assigned thereto, and detects at least one predetermined indicator bit. If the detected indicator bit indicates that the base station has data to transmit, the mobile station starts monitoring a forward packet data control channel from the base station, in order to determine whether to make a transition to an active mode. Otherwise, if the detected indicator bit indicates that the base station has no data to transmit, the mobile station maintains the control hold mode, thus preventing unnecessary power consumption.