Methods and apparatus for service acquisition in a multi-frequency network. In an aspect, a method is provided for service acquisition in a multi-frequency network. The method includes detecting a service acquisition trigger event and identifying a selected RF channel from an acquisition RF list based on signal strength, wherein the acquisition RF list identifies RF channels in one or more local operations infrastructures (LOIs) of the multi-frequency network. The method also includes acquiring a wide system on the selected RF channel, removing the selected RF channel from the acquisition RF list if the wide system can not be acquired on the selected RF channel, and repeating said operations of identifying, acquiring and removing until the wide system is acquired on the selected RF channel or a system acquisition timeout occurs.