Disclosed is a method and apparatus to manage selection of a paging channel in a wireless communication system. When a mobile station powers on in a coverage area having multiple paging channels, the mobile station may apply a hashing algorithm keyed to the mobile station's identifier, to select a paging channel on which to idle. On the other hand, when the mobile station moves from a coverage area having a number of paging channels into a neighboring coverage area having a different number of paging channels, the mobile station may by rote idle on a default paging channel in the neighboring coverage area. In this way, the mobile station can help to avoid an access handoff failure that may arise from the mobile station being busy hashing onto a paging channel when the network transmits an access response message to the mobile station.