A system to control paging cycles in a wireless network assigns mobile stations to one of a plurality of paging groups based on the paging cycle requirements of the individual mobile stations. In addition, the mobile stations in a particular paging group are further subdivided into subgroups that may be substantially equal in size. At any particular paging cycle, only one subgroup of a particular paging group is included in the paging process thus reducing the overall number of mobile stations that need to be paged in any particular paging cycle.