The subject invention selects a starting sub-carrier frequency group for a pilot staggering sequence to facilitate in mitigating the possibility of pilot signal collisions. In one embodiment, a randomized starting sub-carrier frequency group of the pilot is utilized in a first orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) symbol of a frame. In another embodiment, a starting pilot sub-carrier frequency group number is determined by utilizing a random number generator such as, for example, a Pseudo-Noise (PN) sequence generator, seeded by a network identification (ID) number. In this manner, the starting sub-carrier frequency group is specific to that particular network. The subject invention also provides a more scalable system through the trading of system bandwidth for coverage.