Procedures are disclosed for alerting user devices in a 5G/6G network that they have an incoming message, and for enabling those user devices to request their messages in a low-complexity, resource-conserving manner. A user device that uses DRX (discontinuous reception) may be unavailable when a message arrives, in which case the base station may store the message. Periodically, the base station can transmit a polling message that indicates which of the user devices currently has a message on hold. In addition, the base station can allocate an uplink reply region in which those user devices can request their messages without contention. Various versions are disclosed, involving cascaded addressing, sectioning, modulation, and/or identification using network-assigned codes. The compact polling format may enable both small and large networks to accommodate DRX users, with minimal resource usage, according to some embodiments.